


You Don't Mess Around With Jim

by decrescendo



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: After Eleven | Jane Hopper Closes the Gate, Depression, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper Parent-Child Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Good Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Parental Jim "Chief" Hopper, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Written before s3 but mostly s3 compliant, background Jopper, background mileven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-03-06 17:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18856051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decrescendo/pseuds/decrescendo
Summary: “Alright, this? This is music.”Hopper and Eleven learn how to be a family, to the tune of their favorite Jim Croce record.





	1. You Don't Mess Around With Jim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Yeah, he big and dumb as a man can come_   
>  _But he stronger than a country hoss_   
>  _And when the bad folks all get together at night_   
>  _You know they all call big Jim boss_
> 
> After everything, Hopper promises that he is going to keep El safe.

The cabin wasn’t as messy as it had been almost a year ago, but it was a near miss. The door hung half of its hinges so Hopper didn’t bother with trying to shut it, just left it wide open behind them. El was looking around, wide-eyed, and he remembered suddenly that most of this mess was from their fight. Christ, that felt like forever ago.

It was freezing, too, the broken door and windows having long since let out all the excess heat Joyce had trapped, so Hopper left his coat on as he went to stand in the middle of the living room area.

“Well,” he said, “this place has seen better days, hasn’t it?”

He said it lightly, but El lowered her gaze and he did not miss the way her shoulders hunched inward a bit. “Sorry,” she mumbled to the floor.

“Hey.” Hopper went to her and put a hand on her shoulder, and ducked his head so he could look her in the eye. “No apologies. We’re just gonna move forward now, yeah?”

El blew out a long breath. “Okay.”

He glanced into her bedroom, relieved to see that everything in there still seemed to be in place. “You tired?” he asked.

El didn’t roll her eyes, but she gave him a look that accomplished the same thing. “It’s morning,” she reminded him.

It was early afternoon, technically, but he didn’t bother to correct her. “Yeah, I know, but—” She looked exhausted still from closing the gate, even after sleeping nearly thirteen hours at Joyce’s house, but he decided to take her words at face value. If nothing else, the kid took her vow of honesty very seriously. He changed track mid-sentence. “Let’s get to work.”

She gave him a ghost of a smile and he wondered if she realized that it was the same thing he had said on her very first day here. She’d been so quiet then, so jumpy and scared and distrustful of him. Standing here now, even with her pinched, exhausted face and Joyce’s clothes hanging off her thin frame, she looked years older.

Lord knows he felt years older.

She was already working, pushing the sofa back into place. Then she paused and looked up at him. “Music?” she asked, a little hesitantly.

Hopper couldn’t have stopped the smile that spread over his face if he tried. It had become something of a tradition after the first day, listening to Jim Croce while they cleaned. He’d tried making her listen to the rest of his collection, too, even picked up a few new albums over the course of the year, but she hadn’t taken to any of them quite as much. “Yeah, kid,” he said, and went to put on the record.

—

El had done a bit of cleaning already before she ran off, Hopper realized as they worked. The bookcase was standing again, and most of its contents had been returned the shelves. A neat pile of glass indicated that she had at least started sweeping. That made his heart hurt, for some reason he couldn’t quite identify—that she really had cared about trying to make things right. It made the guilt a little stronger.

But they were past that, now. Moving forward. So Hopper picked up the broom and continued sweeping the glass shards, humming softly to the music. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see El swaying a bit to the beat and bobbing her head, though she stilled whenever she thought he was looking. He had to stifle a smile at that.

Once he felt sure they could cross the room safely without slicing their feet open, he turned his attention to the door. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the hinges themselves had been ripped clean off the frame, leaving deep gashes in the wood. He’d have to move the hinges entirely, so that they would have something to cling to. It was tedious work but not difficult, and he almost enjoyed the methodical turning of the screwdriver.

It was a few minutes before he realized that El had stopped cleaning and was standing still, watching him from a few feet away. There was an expression of intense focus on her face, as if she was trying to memorize his movements in order to replicate them herself in the future. It was how she had observed everything he did in the beginning, though he saw that face less often now that the world was a little less of a mystery to her.

“C’mere,” he said, waving her over with the screwdriver. “You wanna learn how to fix this door?”

She nodded and came to sit cross-legged next to him, peering over his shoulder.

He held up the hinge he had freed from the bottom of the door. “This,” he said, “is the hinge. It’s what makes the door swing, see? The part of the doorframe it was attached to is broken off, so I’m moving it up a little higher and re-attaching it.”

El said nothing, but she seemed interested, so he continued to quietly narrate his actions as he worked. A few times he handed her loose nails or asked her to hold the door in place for him, and she appeared to enjoy the involvement. When they had finished, she sat back on her heels with a look of satisfaction.

“There,” said Hopper, swinging the newly attached door smoothly back and forth a few times before closing it tightly. “Now we won’t freeze to death in here.”

He slid the locks shut and then looked down at her, about to suggest they take a break and maybe have a snack, but the words died in his throat. She looked apprehensive suddenly, and was staring at the locks almost as if afraid of them.

Hopper felt his brow furrow in concern and confusion. “You okay, kid?” he asked.

“The man,” she said, still staring at the locks. “In the lab.”

“What?”

Her eyes met his and he was alarmed to see something approaching panic in her expression. “The hurt man. He saw me.”

“Yeah. Doc Owens.” He frowned. “What’s this about, kid?”

She looked back to the locks and he sighed.

“Come on, El. Out with it.”

Still refusing to meet his gaze, she said, “You showed me to him.”

Her voice sounded accusatory, and, Hopper thought, a little hurt. He hoped she would elaborate, because he still didn’t understand, but she said nothing else. After a short pause, he moved to sit down at the kitchen table, and motioned for her to do the same. Whatever this was about, it seemed too serious a conversation to have while sitting on the floor by the front door.

“I don’t understand,” he said once she had settled in her chair. “Are you upset that I let him see you? We didn’t really have a choice, kid, we had to go past him to get to the gate.”

“He’s from the lab,” said El, as if her meaning was obvious.

And then suddenly, to Hopper, it was. “You’re worried he’s one of the bad men,” he realized.

After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

“Ah, kid.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Look. I think we can trust him, okay? He helped us all escape the lab yesterday.” It occurred to him that she probably did not actually know what had transpired before her dramatic entrance at the Byers’ house, but she did not stop him to ask for clarification, so he just kept going. “And he’s been helping Will this year. So, you know, maybe he can help you too.”

If anything, El looked even more troubled at that. "Papa said he would help me," she said quietly. 

And then he had hunted her down, terrorized her and her friends. No wonder El had been eyeing the locks with such concern. She was scared that Owens could find them and break in, just as Brenner would have. 

He felt like the biggest bastard suddenly, telling Owens about El without explaining things to her first. It had seemed like such a little thing yesterday, with the gate still open, but now he realized how it must have looked to her: like he had been willing to sell her out in order to get to the gate. Like after everything, she was still just a means to an end for him, just as she had been for Brenner and his men.

"We can trust him," he said again, with greater certainty. "He isn't one of the bad men. He's there to help  _stop_ the bad men."

Her next words were whispered. “What if he’s lying?”

And maybe she was right. Maybe it had been foolish of him to say anything to Owens. Maybe he couldn’t really be trusted. Maybe he should have been silent about El, letting Owens draw his own conclusions. Maybe he should have just shot him rather than take the risk.

But he did not voice any of those concerns to El. Instead, he reached across the table and laid his hand gently on top of hers. “Listen,” he said, quietly and seriously. “It’s impossible to know for sure. But I do know this. I am going to keep you safe. Okay?”

El just looked at him with those wide, fearful eyes.

“Those bad men aren’t going to get you. Even if Owens gets them all together to look for you, they’d have to get past me first, yeah? And that’s not going to happen.”

“Okay,” whispered El.

Hopper gave her hand a squeeze. “I am going to keep you safe,” he repeated. “No matter what. I _promise._ ”

He couldn’t really promise that. He knew that. No one could promise it.

But damn if he wasn’t going to do his absolute best.


	2. Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Brighter Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And tomorrow's gonna be a brighter day_   
>  _There's gonna be some changes_   
>  _Tomorrow's gonna be a brighter day_   
>  _This time you can believe me_   
>  _No more cryin' in your lonely room_   
>  _And no more empty nights_   
>  _'Cause tomorrow mornin' everything will turn out right_
> 
> El can’t be done hiding, not yet, but Hopper is determined not to repeat his mistakes from the past year.

El was quiet the next morning at breakfast. There was nothing unusual in that—they ate in silence more often than not, neither being much interested in small talk—but this felt different. She was stabbing at her Eggos dejectedly and seemed far more tense and withdrawn than she should have, considering she’d just seen her friends and saved the world hardly thirty hours ago. For most of the meal Hopper left her alone, hoping she would maybe decide to open up to him without prodding, but if he was being honest with himself he knew that wouldn’t happen.

Finally, after a particularly vicious poke of her fork, he set down his coffee and sighed. “Come on, kid, out with it.”

She glowered at her plate for a moment but when she looked up at him, he was surprised to find her eyes clouded not with anger or annoyance but with something like sadness. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, apparently struggling to find the words, before saying quietly, “I can’t do it again.”

Hopper frowned. “Do what?”

“Hide.” She swallowed hard. “I have to see them.”

Hopper regarded her carefully, unsure what to say. Just yesterday she’d been so afraid of being found, but of course she wouldn’t just willingly disappear again, now that her friends knew she was alive. And he could hardly ask her to, after all that had happened. She couldn’t handle being cooped up with him indefinitely, and to be honest, neither could he. But it still wasn’t safe.

“El…” he started, not having any idea how he planned to finish that sentence.

“They know anyway,” she pleaded. “And that man will help me.”

“Doc Owens?” She nodded. “I know, kid, he _will_ , but that’ll take time, okay?”

“How long?”

She said it so desperately that he swore he could feel his heart breaking. He forced himself to meet her eyes, which were shining suddenly with unshed tears. He hated himself for the answer he knew he had to give her. “I don’t know.”

El looked away and he could see her biting her lip, struggling to control herself. Surely it was a sign of progress, that she wasn’t screaming at him and sending things flying the way she had a few days ago, but he thought he might prefer the tantrums to this quiet devastation.

He glanced at his watch and swore quietly. “Listen,” he said, feeling like the biggest asshole on the planet, “I have to go to work. And the don’t-be-stupid rules are still in effect.” She huffed, crossing her arms, and he could tell that underneath the show of anger she was really about to cry.

 _Never mind,_ he wanted to tell her, _I’ll take the day off, and we can eat Eggos and go for a walk and talk about it, okay?_ But he’d already stayed home with her yesterday, and been stuck in the lab the day before, and he couldn’t miss another day without making Callahan and Powell worried enough to come snooping around his house. And for them to figure out he didn’t live there anymore was the last thing he needed.

So he just reached out and ruffled her hair, trying to ignore the ache in his chest when it didn’t make her smile. “We’ll figure something out,” he told her. “I promise.”

As he put on his coat and left, he wondered how much longer his promises would hold any weight with her. He wondered if she’d already stopped believing them.

—

Work was always dull, but it was especially agonizing now, after the events of the past few days. Hopper had hoped that the boring routine would be relaxing, even comforting, but instead he found himself looking at his watch every few minutes, desperate to get back home to El. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to say to her, but he hated thinking of her alone at the cabin. And he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little worried that she would run off again, even after her tearful apology.

Finally at four-fifteen (four-one-five, said a voice in his head) he couldn’t take it any longer. He gathered up some paperwork to finish at home and crept out of his office, hoping against hope that Flo wouldn’t be at her desk. No such luck. “Leaving already, Hop?” she called, disapprovingly.

He held up the stack of paperwork. “I’ll get it done, Flo.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’d better. And don’t think you can get out of here this early every day, now.”

There was nothing unusual in her voice, nothing that betrayed any suspicion, but still Hopper worried that she thought something was going on. His reputation as a drunken slacker certainly helped, but it was possible that even showing up today hadn’t been enough to make up for being so erratic lately.

El wasn’t expecting him this early, so she wouldn’t have put out TV dinners for them yet. That was, if she wasn’t too angry with him to do it at all. With that in mind, Hopper decided to pick up some food on the way home. Maybe, just maybe, with a hamburger and fries and a strawberry milkshake, she would perk up a little bit.

It occurred to him, as he knocked on the cabin door thirty minutes later, that bribing her with junk food was perhaps not the greatest parenting strategy. And he’d been doing it a lot lately, with the Halloween candy and the triple-decker Eggo extravaganza and now with the slightly greasy to-go bag in his hand. But it was all he could think of to make her solitary life just a little more bearable.

He wasn’t surprised to find her lying on the sofa, staring at the TV without really seeming to see it. She didn’t even look up when he came in, betrayed no excitement or even surprise to see him home so early.

“Hey, kid,” he said, depositing the bag on the kitchen table. “I brought you your favorite.”

“Not hungry,” she said from the couch, without moving.

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. He thought about being strict, making her come to the table and eat. Instead he just put her milkshake in the freezer so it wouldn’t melt and set the rest of the bag in the oven, hoping it wouldn’t cool too quickly. Then he went and sat down on the coffee table, facing her.

“I can’t see,” she muttered, craning her neck to look at the TV screen.

“You weren’t really watching it anyway.”

“Yes I _was,_ ” she argued, but without any energy. She dropped her head back to the pillow and glared at him.

Hopper forced himself not to shrink under her glare, taking out a cigarette and lighting it as casually as he could.

“I was thinking,” he said after a few puffs of smoke. “Today at work. About…what you said this morning.”

She still didn’t move, but he thought he saw a vague flicker of something in her eyes. Interest. Maybe even hope.

“And you’re right. You can’t stay locked up forever.” He paused, drumming his fingers on his knee. “Things aren’t safe yet. I don’t know when they will be. But I meant it, okay? We’re gonna figure it out.”

El sat up. “You always say that,” she accused. But her voice wobbled a little on the next sentence. “But nothing ever changes.”

He held up a hand. “There _will_ be changes. Hear me out, kid. You still can’t go out alone. Or in public. But I think…” He hesitated. He’d thought a lot about this at work today, and he still wasn’t certain it was a good idea, but he forced himself to say it. “I think maybe you can go to the Byers’ house sometimes. See your friends there.”

El sat up a little straighter, but still looked wary. “Maybe?”

“Definitely,” Hopper corrected himself reluctantly. “You _will_ be able to go to the Byers’ house. Not every day, maybe not even every week, but enough. And maybe— _maybe_ —some of your friends could come here, sometimes.”

El’s eyes had lit up as soon as he said _definitely,_ and at his last sentence, she couldn’t stop the smile that crept onto her face. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t thank me,” said Hopper. He sighed. “You should be allowed to see your friends. But,” he added, in the sternest voice he could muster, “we are _not_ going to be _stupid_ about it. _No_ going outside with them, and especially not in town, and—”

“I know,” said El earnestly.

“Good.” He took a deep breath. “And there’s gonna be some changes around here too.”

El just watched him, looking a little concerned at his serious tone.

“Like…” Unconsciously, he fiddled with the hair-tie on his wrist. He didn’t even notice until he realized El was looking at it. He forced himself to put his hands down. “I know I’ve messed up a lot. Being late, and yelling, and…I can’t promise things are always gonna be perfect, kid. But I’m gonna try to be better, okay?”

She smiled a little. “Me too.”

He reached forward and ruffled her hair, and this time it made her grin. "Now, come on. That strawberry milkshake isn't gonna drink itself."


	3. New York's Not My Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Well, things were spinning round me_   
>  _And all my thoughts were cloudy_   
>  _And I had begun to doubt all the things that were me_   
>  _Been in so many places_   
>  _You know I've run so many races_   
>  _And looked into the empty faces of the people of the night_   
>  _And something is just not right_   
>  _'Cause I know that I gotta get out of here_   
>  _I'm so alone_   
>  _Don't you know that I gotta get out of here_   
>  _'Cause, New York's not my home_
> 
> El makes a discovery about Hopper's past while looking for Christmas decorations, and it prompts a conversation about their big city experiences.

On the first day of December, Hopper entered the station to find it strung with Christmas lights. He stood in the doorway, blinking stupidly up at them, for long enough that Powell called from his desk, “Alright there, Chief?”

He shook himself. “Yeah, fine,” he said gruffly, in a way that he knew wasn’t quite convincing, and then escaped quickly into his office and shut the door before anyone could call him on it.

He’d known Christmas was coming, of course. He’d been painfully aware of it for weeks. Somehow he’d been hoping—foolishly, he knew—that it would just never come, or that he could ignore it entirely and have that be okay. But Flo’s decorating was a harsh reminder that the holiday season was happening, whether he liked it or not, and he would eventually have to do something about it.

Hopper hadn’t celebrated Christmas in years; after Sara and the divorce, there wasn’t any point, and the holidays had a way of making his pain feel raw and unbearable all over again. But he was raising another kid now, and part of the point of that was to give her a normal life, and normal lives included things like Christmas. And after everything the kid had been through—was still going through—she deserved to have her first real Christmas be as special as Hopper could make it.

So that night, as he watched El take their dishes from dinner to the sink, he steeled himself and said, with an ease he didn’t quite feel, “So, kid, it’s Christmas time.”

She turned to him, confused. “Christmas is on December twenty-five,” she informed him, and for emphasis she glanced up at the calendar she’d pinned to the wall a few months back.

“December twenty-fifth, yeah,” Hopper corrected her. “But usually people start celebrating before that. With, you know, decorations and music and stuff like that.”

If anything, that only seemed to make her more confused. “Why?”

“Because Christmas is…” _A ridiculous time that companies use to sell fake love and cheer to idiots,_ he wanted to say, but that was too cynical, and not exactly in line with his wish to give El a happy first Christmas. “It’s a special time,” he decided. “And people want to make it extra special.”

“Lights,” said El, seeming to remember. “There were lights, on the houses. Before you found me. Was that…Christmas?”

“Yeah, kid,” he said. He knew she’d never gotten holiday celebrations in the lab, that all this was new and strange to her. Still, it made his heart hurt unexpectedly more, to hear that her only experience with Christmas decorations was the strange glittering she saw on people’s houses as she wandered the woods, freezing and alone. He’d been planning to introduce it to her more slowly, maybe rent a Christmas movie tomorrow and then figure out some kind of decoration later. But suddenly he couldn’t stand that she’d never seen Christmas lights in a friendlier context, so before he could change his mind, he stood up and said, “Come on, I think I’ve got some old lights around here somewhere. You want to help me put them up?”

She immediately dropped the glass she’d been rinsing into the sink, where it clattered loudly against the other dishes. She looked delighted in a way he hadn’t seen since the very beginning, when everything was still new and exciting to her.

He laughed a little in spite of himself, and beckoned for her to follow him as he went to open the hatch to the basement.

He hadn’t kept much from the house in New York, mostly just sentimental things that he couldn’t get rid of but hadn’t wanted to put out again in Hawkins. He wasn’t even sure why he still had the Christmas lights, which had no particular value. But now, as he pulled them out of the cardboard box and started unwinding them, he was glad that he had.

“Here,” he said to El, handing her a strand, “help me untangle these.”

But she didn’t take them, and he glanced up at her. She was distracted, staring at the writing on the side of the box. “New York,” she read carefully, and looked up at him. “What’s that?”

“New York City,” he said, setting down the lights. “It’s a real big city, up north of here. I used to live there.” _With Sara,_ he almost added, but he thought she could probably guess that without his saying.

“New York City,” she repeated. She considered it for a moment, and he wondered if she could even imagine what a big city was like. She’d seen them on TV, of course, but he knew from experience how different that was from actually being in one. He’d been shocked, himself, when he first moved from Hawkins. Everything was so much _more_ than he’d ever expected. Then she said, definitively, “I don’t like the city.”

He smiled at her certainty. “Neither do I, but don’t knock it till you try it, kid,” he said. “Someday you can go see a big city for yourself. See what you think.”

Usually she looked happy when he talked about the future like that. He knew how much she clung to the hope of someday living a more normal life. But now she just looked hesitant, and he could see the way her expression cycled through a few different emotions, from uncertainty to fear to determination. She took a deep breath. “I did.”

“What?”

“I did see a big city.”

Hopper felt his eyebrows furrowing as he looked at her. “Not on TV, kid,” he said, though he was pretty sure from the way she said it that that wasn’t what she meant.

She shook her head. “No, for real. I…” And then she just looked at him, as if willing him to understand without her having to say any more.

But he didn’t understand, not at all. She’d been locked in a lab in Hawkins her whole life, and then gone almost immediately to being locked in a cabin in Hawkins. When in the world could she have seen a city?

And then, as they stared at each other, he realized suddenly, and felt as if his stomach had dropped to somewhere around his knees. “El,” he said quietly, doing his very best to keep his voice steady. “Please tell me you don’t mean what I think you mean.”

Because it would make sense, wouldn’t it, for her to have run off all the way to Indianapolis when she went to see her mom. The Ives weren’t far from the city. It would explain the clothes, anyway, which he knew couldn’t have come from her Aunt Becky, but which he hadn’t pressed her about since that night in the car. A big-city escape for a small-town girl who’d been denied so much of the world. It made perfect sense. He cursed himself for not having guessed it sooner.

El was shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have told you sooner. I thought you would be mad.”

“Of course I’m _mad,_ kid,” he snapped, and then took a deep breath. More calmly, he tried again. “Going to find your mom was stupid and dangerous, but I can’t blame you for that. But going all the way to Indianapolis? _Jesus_ , El, did you _want_ to get into some kind of trouble?”

“In-Indianapolis?” she said.

Hopper stared at her. “Is that…not where you went?”

She shook her head. She looked as if she very much regretted bringing it up at all.

“Well, where the hell’d you go?”

“Chicago,” she whispered.

He blinked at her. “You went to _Chicago?_ ”

She nodded miserably.

There were a million questions running through his mind. “Why the hell did you go to Chicago?” Then, before she could answer: “How the hell did you _get_ to Chicago?”

El mumbled something to her knees that he didn’t quite catch.

“Speak up,” he said sharply.

“I stole money,” she said quietly. “From Aunt Becky. Took a bus.” Then she looked up at him, and he could see tears in her eyes. “I went to see my sister.”

Any decent parent would address the theft, Hopper thought, but it hardly seemed important just then. He was distracted by the last thing she had said. “Your…you went to see your sister?” Terry Ives didn’t have any other children, surely. He would know, with all the digging he’d done last year.

El held out her wrist, where he knew the tattoo was, though she always kept it covered. “Eight,” she said. “Her name’s Kali.”

“Kali.”

“Aunt Becky gave me a picture. From the newspaper. Kali was missing. Just like…” She swallowed hard. “Just like me.”

Hopper closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to calm the combination of fear and anger coursing through him. She’d already gone, and she’d made it back safe, so there was no use getting worked up about it now, but…it was _so dangerous,_ what she’d done, so dangerous and so, so stupid. He took a deep breath. He’d learned his lesson, with the yelling, knew now that that was no way to deal with a traumatized telekinetic teenager no matter what she’d done, but right now he just wanted to scream, scream forever until his throat was raw and maybe break a few things. She could have _died._ In _Chicago._ She could have been found and taken again, but to a different lab, because they’d never be stupid enough to keep her in Hawkins. And then Will would have died, and the other kids, and maybe himself and Joyce too, and even if all of them had somehow pulled through Hopper would have come home after it all to an empty cabin and he would have never, ever known what had happened to her. He tried to imagine it, waiting for days, months, years, hoping that El would come home, and it never happening.

“I’m sorry,” she said shakily. “I…”

He raised his head to look at her, and she trailed off when her eyes met his.

Hopper was torn between telling her how unacceptable her trip had been and how relieved he was that she had come home, but he thought he might burst into tears if he said either of those things. So instead he asked, “Did you find her?”

El nodded.

“And? You had, what, some kinda happy reunion with her? How old is she?”

“Older than me,” said El. “Younger than you. She…was nice to me. I liked her.”

Hopper sighed. “Kid, why didn’t you _tell_ me about her?” he asked, hating how hurt he sounded, but he couldn’t help it. He’d thought they were past this, all this secrecy. He had thought she finally trusted him.

At his words, her lip started trembling, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped at it with her sleeve.

There had to be more to this story, Hopper thought. El couldn’t have shown up on the doorstep of some super-powered stranger, chatted for awhile, and then left again. Something else must have happened to make her so reluctant to talk about it.

But maybe they could talk about all that later. Tonight, he’d wanted to help her make her first happy Christmas memories, and instead they were sitting on the floor with her struggling not to cry and him struggling not to yell. So he decided to set the issue aside for now. Maybe it was cowardly on his part—maybe he just wanted to avoid the serious conversation he knew they’d have to have—but El clearly didn’t want to talk about it right now, either. So he did his best to conjure up a smile and say, “So you’re not a city girl, huh?”

She looked at him uncertainly through watery eyes, confused by his sudden change of tone. After a long pause, she shook her head.

“Yeah,” said Hopper, “me neither.”

El’s mouth twitched with the tiniest of smiles. “You’re not a city girl?” she asked slyly.

She joked so infrequently that it startled a genuine laugh out of him. He reached out to gently swat her knee. “Not a city girl,” he confirmed. “Too loud. Too many people and none of them are friendly.”

“Too many people,” El agreed. Then her face grew serious again. “I like it here.”

Hopper felt something like relief rush through him. He was so afraid that El would grow to resent him all over again, that her frustration with being cooped up would outweigh any affection she might feel toward him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” said Hopper. “Guess we won’t be going back to New York or Chicago any time soon, will we?”

“No.”

He ruffled her hair and then picked up the strand of lights that lay on the floor next to them, forgotten. “Let’s get these lights up, yeah? Can you go grab my toolbox?”

She smiled and ran to take it down from the shelf.


	4. Hard Time Losin' Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Oh sometimes skies are cloudy_   
>  _And sometimes skies are blue_   
>  _And sometimes they say that you eat the bear_   
>  _But sometimes the bear eats you_   
>  _And sometimes I feel like I should go_   
>  _Far far away and hide_   
>  _'Cause I keep a waitin' for my ship to come in_   
>  _And all that ever comes is the tide_
> 
> __Sometimes it’s hard to cope with everything. And also, sometimes, there’s dancing.

Hopper hesitated at El’s bedroom door, uncertain whether to wake her. Usually she emerged from her room within minutes of his own getting up, and they ate breakfast together nearly every day. He liked to see her before going to work in the morning, and he thought she probably felt the same. Today, though, he’d eaten alone, and now he stood debating whether he should let her sleep or wake her to say goodbye before leaving.

Maybe she really did need the extra sleep. Things had been hectic the last few weeks, with El’s first real holiday season and all her friends out of school for Christmas vacation. But he hated to leave her without saying anything, even though she would know where he had gone. If nothing else, he decided, he could at least wake her up enough to let her know he was heading to work, and then let her go right back to sleep.

She didn’t answer when he knocked on the door. “Hey, kid?” he called. “You awake?”

When he still didn’t hear anything he opened the door softly and peaked in. She was curled on her side, facing away from him. For a moment he thought she was still asleep, but then he realized that she looked too tense for that—she held herself stiffly, her shoulders hunched inward.

“You alright?” he asked, concerned. He ran through all the possible explanations in his mind as he stepped fully into the room. There hadn’t been a fight recently, so he couldn’t think of any reason she would be angry with him, and she’d shown no signs of coming down with something.

Then he remembered, suddenly: it was January seventh, which meant that her friends were all back at school today. After a long break during which El been almost like a regular kid, able to see them almost every day either here or at Joyce’s, now she was back to being on the outside again—shut away here while the rest of them were together without her. He cursed silently to himself. He should have anticipated that she’d be upset. He could have taken the day off work or something, so he could be around to help take her mind off of it.

He sighed and walked around to the other side of the bed, sitting down on the edge. He ducked his head so he could see her face, expecting to find her pouting or maybe even in tears. Instead, he was alarmed to see that she was staring straight ahead at the wall, her eyes looking almost glazed over, completely expressionless. The blankness in her face made his blood run cold. “El?” He put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s goin’ on?” He tried to keep the worry out of his voice, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

She still didn’t react.

“El, hey.” He brushed the back of his hand against his forehead, instinctively checking for a fever, even though he knew that wasn’t what was wrong. “You’re scaring me, kid. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

She didn’t speak, but he did finally see a flicker of something like recognition in her eyes. It was enough to calm Hopper’s nerves a bit, though she kept staring straight ahead with that terrifyingly empty expression.

But now that he had had a moment to think more rationally, he realized that he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with that look. He hadn’t seen it on her, or on anyone really, but it was an expression he imagined he’d worn countless times himself on all those days when the world was too much to face and he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, much less move or speak. And really, now that he thought about it, he was only surprised that this hadn’t come up with her sooner.

And he had absolutely no idea how to handle it.

She’d been depressed before, of course. Months cooped up without any connection to the outside world would do that to anyone. But this catatonic level of despair was new for her, at least as far as Hopper was aware. New, but hardly shocking, given all the kid had been through.

He ran his hand gently through her hair. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured.

In the kitchen, he picked up his radio to call Flo. “Hey, it’s me,” he said, doing his best to make his voice sound realistically scratchy and tired. “I’m not gonna make it in today.”

“Sick or drunk?” asked Flo, sounding bored.

“Sick.” He contemplated forcing a cough and then decided it would be overkill.

“Alright,” sighed Flo, “I’ll call someone else in.”

“You’re the best.”

Then he filled a glass of water for El and brought it into her room. She still hadn’t moved when he settled again on the edge of her bed. He started stroking her hair again, feeling that it was grossly inadequate, but not knowing what else he could do to help. “You don’t have to say anything,” he said eventually, without breaking his hand’s gentle rhythm. “But can you just give me some sign that you can hear me? Just nod for me?”

There was a long pause and Hopper felt his heart rate pick up, certain that she either couldn’t understand what he was saying or couldn’t make herself react. But then, finally, she gave the tiniest nod.

He let out a deep sigh of relief. “Good, that’s good,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

He tried to think what had helped him when he used to get like this, in the first few years after Sara’s death. Nothing came to mind. He’d had no one around to take care of him, and usually he’d just lain like that until he either fell back asleep or eventually regained the necessary motor skills to go in search of alcohol. The latter was clearly not an option here—and really had never been a good option for himself, either—but he was loathe to just leave her alone in hopes that she fell asleep at some point.

He glanced over at the bedside table, where the book they had been reading together lay. It was worth a try, he figured, and it beat just sitting here and anxiously watching her. “You want me to read to you?” he asked, already reaching over to pick the book up.

She didn’t answer him, unsurprisingly, but he went ahead and flipped it open to where they had left off the previous night. He settled his hand on her shoulder again, hoping the contact might somehow bring her back to herself, and began to read, awkwardly fumbling the pages with his one free hand.

“After another week of rain the high arch of blue sky appeared again and the sun which poured down was quite hot. Though there had been no chance to see either the secret garden or Dickon, Mistress Mary had enjoyed herself very much. The week had not seemed long. She had spent hours of every day with Colin in his room…”

He read for what felt to him like forever, even as his throat grew sore and his voice raspy. Every couple of pages he glanced up at El, and he felt as if a pit was sinking further and further into his stomach as he saw no change.

But then, after what must have been close to an hour, he heard a tiny sniffling noise from her. Startled, he looked up at her to see tears standing out on her pale face. She was blinking rapidly, her lower lip trembling.

Any other time, the sight of her crying would have worried him. Now he was so relieved that he felt almost dizzy with it. “Hey, kid,” he murmured, closing the book and setting it aside. He wiped some of her tears away with the pad of his thumb and then left his hand there cradled against the side of her head, stroking her temple lightly.

She blinked up at him and a few more tears slipped out. She opened her mouth as if to speak but no sound came out. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Hop,” she managed, barely audible.

Hopper had to blink back sudden tears of his own at the pain and grief in her voice. “I’m right here,” he murmured.

“Hurts,” she whispered.

He took one of her hands in his. “Where does it hurt?”

She seemed at a loss for words and he realized her breath was starting to come a little more loudly, too quick and too shallow for his comfort.

“Just breathe with me, okay?” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could manage. “In…and out. In…and out. That’s it.” He took exaggerated breaths of his own to help her keep the rhythm.

She was shaking and the tears were coming faster. “My chest,” she gasped out. “I—it feels—”

“Shh, honey, I know.” He moved a hand to her back, rubbing up and down in time with the breathing pattern he wanted her to follow. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Suddenly she sat upright, throwing off his hand, and then swayed a little at the sudden change in position. She was gasping loudly, breathing pattern entirely lost, and she leaned forward to clutch her head in her hands.

“Woah, hey.” Hopper backed up a little, giving her space, but still held out a hand toward her as if trying to calm a frightened animal. “Breathe, breathe breathe breathe. In…and out. You can do it.”

He breathed deeply with her and after a few minutes she had stopped hyperventilating. She looked up at him, eyes clouded with pain, and it broke his heart. Slowly, so that she would have time to pull away if she didn’t want to be touched, he reached out and put a hand on her knee.

“That’s better,” he whispered. Then, after a little hesitation, he asked, “Do you wanna tell me what happened there?”

She shrugged, and then reached for the hand on her knee. He thought she was going to push it away, but instead she slid hers into it, holding it tightly. Hopper clutched her hand back, rubbing his thumb back and forth against her knuckles.

He tried again. “Have you felt like that before?"

“No,” she said, and then paused. “Not…here,” she amended. “But—in the lab…”

Hopper could picture it all too easily, his little girl lying on her hard hospital bed, immobilized by depression and without anyone to help her through it. He imagined her hyperventilating alone, not understanding why it was happening. He clutched her hand a little harder. There was a sudden, irrational guilt coursing through him, because he was powerless to take those painful memories away from her, and because it had happened again, with him, when he was supposed to be taking care of her. When he should have known that she would be upset today, but had failed to realize until it was too late.

“Was it because of school?” he asked.

She looked a little surprised that he had guessed, and nodded. But then she seemed to change her mind and shook her head. “Not just school.”

“What else then?” he said patiently.

She seemed to be struggling with herself, searching for the words. “I want to be there,” she said finally. “With my friends. But I…I’m scared.”

He waited a moment for her to elaborate, and then prompted her when she didn’t. “Why are you scared?”

“What if it isn’t good?” she whispered, sounding broken. “What if…I go to school, and it’s bad, because there’s mouthbreathers, and I’m not smart enough, and…” She swallowed hard, struggling to continue without crying. “What if I’m too messed up and I can never be normal?”

“Oh, kid,” sighed Hopper, not knowing what to say, because he had the exact same fears. He was so terrified that even when she went to school—which would probably happen in the fall, thanks to the fake birth certificate that was now framed above the TV—she would be unable to adjust to a regular life. He didn’t really know much about how trauma worked in children, but he did know that over a decade of being treated like a lab rat had left some deep scars that would probably never fully heal. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

She was too smart for her own good, he thought, and wished briefly that she was younger, so that his reassurances might have more weight. “We’ll _make_ it okay,” he said firmly.

She didn’t look reassured by this. Instead, her face crumpled. “I’m just scared,” she choked out. “And I…” She let out a sob, and then tried to speak through it, her words barely audible. “I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

Hopper had felt his heart break already a few times that morning. At that, though, he felt it pang sharply again. “C’mere,” he said, and opened his arms to her. She fell against him and pressed her face into his shoulder, shaking with sobs. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, holding her tightly and rocking her back and forth. “I’ve got you.”

Eventually her sobs subsided and she fell still against him, breathing deeply in his arms. He could feel a damp patch in his uniform, saturated with tears and probably snot, but he didn’t care in the slightest.

“You should eat something,” he murmured after awhile. “You up for some Eggos?”

She pulled back a little and nodded, wiping her streaming nose on her sleeve. Then she seemed to notice for the first time that he was dressed for work. “Are you late?” she asked, sounding concerned.

He smiled at her, his heart warmed by how much she seemed to care. “Don’t worry about it, kid, I’m staying home today.” He ruffled her hair, gently, and then stood and held out a hand to help her up. When she was standing, he wound an arm around her shoulders, and led her into the kitchen.

She sat down at the table while he put the Eggs in the toaster, looking exhausted and still miserable, though it was still infinitely better than the chillingly empty stare. While he waited for them to toast, he drummed his fingers on the counter and then had an idea. “How about some happy music?” he suggested.

She just shrugged, not looking too enthusiastic, which he supposed was fair. It was silly to think she’d cheer right up just because he’d put on a record she liked. But he nonetheless went to the record player and turned it on. The record he’d been going to play was already on the turntable.

She did seem to perk up a little as she ate, even managing a tiny smile when Hopper started snapping his fingers and humming along to the music. Just as he was standing up to take her plate to the sink, the song changed, and, struck by a sudden inspiration, he set the plate back down and held out his hand to her. She just looked at it, uncomprehending, until he shook it at her and she hesitantly reached out to take it.

He pulled her up and took her other hand in his, and started to shake his hips in time with the music, swaying his arms a little. She looked up at him, startled, and stood stiffly as he tried to dance with her.

“ _An’ you think you seen trouble_ , _”_ he sang, quietly and horribly off key, and it finally coaxed a full smile out of her. She loosened up, not dancing herself yet, but allowing Hopper to swing her arms with his. “ _Well you’re lookin’ at the man, uh-huh. Oh the world’s own original hard luck story, and a hard time losin’ man._ ”

She laughed a little, and Hopper thought it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. He laughed himself, when she started swaying her own hips, trying to match his movements. For a few blissful minutes, they just danced together, throwing out increasingly erratic moves, and it was if nothing had ever been wrong.

But when the song started to fade out, some of the light in El’s eyes died away. As the next song started playing—a slower, sadder one—she sank back into her chair, looking weary.

Hopper sighed, and went to turn off the music. He crouched in front of her. “I know it’s tough, kid,” he said quietly. “But we’re gonna work it out. Whatever happens, we’ll get through it. Together."

She looked down at her hands, tightly knotted in her lap. “Okay,” she whispered.

He smiled at her. “That’s my girl.” He stood to take her plate, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head before bringing it to the sink.


	5. Photographs and Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Photographs and memories_   
>  _All the love you gave to me_   
>  _Somehow it just can't be true_   
>  _That's all I've left of you_
> 
> __It’s Sara’s birthday, and finally Hopper feels ready to talk about his first daughter with his second one.

Hopper wasn’t sure whether it was a blessing or a curse that he had to go to work today. In the past, he’d always taken this day off, and Flo, bless her annoyingly maternal heart, never gave him shit for it, even though he’d never told her the real reason for his absence. But last year, he’d found that being home with El was hardly better than working. It wasn’t as if he could drink himself into a stupor with a twelve-year-old watching. And the silent fear in her eyes when he’d lied and said he was too sick to get out of bed had filled him with guilt that made the whole thing that much more unbearable.

It was just a normal day, he told himself as he got dressed. Just a day. Sara wasn’t _more_ dead just because she should have been turning thirteen today. He tried not to notice that his hands were shaking as he lifted his toothbrush to his mouth. He also tried not to notice the way El watched him during breakfast, as if she could tell he wasn’t okay but didn’t know whether she could ask him about it. He’d already rehearsed what he would say to her if she did ask. _Just a cold, kid. Just a little tired. Nothing to worry about._ He only hoped she wouldn’t be perceptive enough to remember that this was the same date as the last time he’d been sick.

He knew that he could just tell El that it was Sara’s birthday. She would understand; her capacity for empathy, even after all she’d been through, still amazed him. And while Sara had still been a secret last year, El now wore her old hair tie on her wrist every single day. He could tell her, and it would be okay.

But he also could barely bring himself to look El in the eye this morning, much less ruffle her hair or kiss the top of her head or give her a hug the way he usually did before leaving for work. He tried not to notice the confusion and hurt in her face as he shut the door behind him.

As soon as he arrived at the station, he thought that this had probably been a bad idea. As awful as he would have felt staying at home stone-cold sober while pretending to be okay for El’s sake, being at work stone-cold sober while pretending to be okay for all of Hawkins was infinitely worse. He immediately shut himself in his office, not bothering to grab a donut or even a cup of coffee the way he always did. The thought of eating made him feel nauseous. He put his head in his hands. His hands were still shaking.

It was nine-fourteen. Thirteen years ago at this exact moment he’d been driving Diane to the hospital, furious at how slowly his car was moving through the several unplowed inches of early-February snow. Diane was yelling at him— _hurry up, hurry up, do you want the baby to be born in the car—_ and he was biting his tongue to keep from snapping back at her in frustration. This birth thing was far more stressful than anyone had ever warned him about. He only hoped that, at the end of it, he’d have a son.

There was a knock on his office door and he groaned into his hands before lifting his head. He wondered whether he could get away with telling whoever it was to leave him alone. Probably not, he decided. “Come in.”

The door opened and Flo stepped in before shutting it behind her. Her arms were crossed and she was looking at him sternly, but he thought he could see some sympathy there, too. “Why are you here today, Hop?” she asked, with as much gentleness as he’d ever heard from her.

She knew, then. Of course she did. Knowing Flo, she’d probably dug up Sara’s birthday from some public record to confirm her suspicion years ago. Still, he pretended not to understand her meaning. “It’s Monday, isn’t it?” he grunted.

“Hopper.” She gave him a look that he couldn’t quite decipher. “Go home. We’ll take care of things here.”

He almost argued with her. A small part of him wanted to get through this day just to prove that he could. But he glanced at his watch and it was nine-eighteen, which meant that he and Diane had just been getting to the hospital right around now, and Diane was being wheeled into a room and the next time he stepped out of the maternity ward he’d had a tiny baby girl in his arms. No, he thought, he really couldn’t handle being here.

“Thanks, Flo,” he muttered, and put on his coat and hat and brushed past her without another word.

He had no intention of going back to the cabin. The wrong little girl would be there to greet him, and he felt so guilty for thinking of El that way that he couldn’t stand to face her. So he just started driving, aimlessly, and rolled the windows down so that he could feel the bitterly cold air stinging his hands and face.

It wasn’t that he wished El was Sara. Not really. El was his kid as much as Sara had been and he loved her with the same desperate fierceness. But this morning, when he’d watched El stumble tiredly from her bedroom to the bathroom, watched her slide into her chair at the kitchen table with a glorious bedhead, he’d felt nothing but a hollow sort of bitterness that he’d never see Sara do those things. And if he was being honest with himself, he was terrified that he’d mess up and say something to El that made her feel like his second choice, his consolation prize. And she _wasn’t._

But wasn’t that part of the problem? Hopper turned a corner more sharply than he intended, causing his tires to screech against the pavement. How could he see El as anything _but_ his second choice without it feeling as if he was betraying Sara? El would never have come into his life if Sara hadn’t died. So loving El was like being glad that Sara was gone.

He knew that was irrational, of course. Knew that wasn’t how love worked, wasn’t how grief worked, wasn’t how parenting worked. But it was hard to convince himself of that today.

Usually, Hopper tried to keep a handle on his memories of Sara. Tried to pack them away, move on with his life. But as he drove, he let all his memories wash over him.

Her first birthday party had been mouse themed. It had been Diane’s mother’s idea, based on a picture book that always made Sara giggle. It was difficult now to imagine himself as a person who would throw a mouse-themed birthday party, but he thought it might have been the most fun he’d ever had at an event. She’d smashed her cake with her tiny fist and smeared it all over her face, and then over his face when he’d tried to clean her up.

There had been an ice storm on her second birthday, and they’d had to cancel the party. Diane had been disappointed, but even without her extended family there Sara was delighted, toddling around the living room and pointing at all the decorations and clapping. She’d managed to blow out her own candles that year, after a few tries.

Hopper realized his hands had gone numb. He also realized that he did not really know where he was. He found he didn’t care.

There had been other children for her next few birthdays, their friends’ kids and eventually some friends of her own from school. Games and screaming and singing and more than a few tantrums and enough chaos that he and Diane had fallen into bed exhausted and vowed never to host a party like that again. Bitterly, he supposed they’d gotten their wish.

When Sara turned five, they took her to the Brooklyn Children’s museum. For her sixth birthday they went ice skating. She’d refused to let go of his hand the entire time, insisting she would fall, but she hadn’t wanted to leave even when the rink closed for the evening. They spent her seventh birthday in the hospital. She spent most of the day in and out of a fitful sleep. She felt too sick to eat the cupcake Hopper brought her, even though it was chocolate with strawberry frosting.

That birthday had been the last one.

Hopper didn’t realize how long he’d been driving until the sun was suddenly low enough to be in his eyes. He put down the visor and looked at the time and cursed loudly. It was nearly five, and he had no idea how long it would take him to find his way home from wherever he’d ended up. Now, on top of everything else, El would be angry that he was late. And he’d already hurt her enough with his behavior this morning.

It was just after six when he finally knocked on the door of the cabin. He held his breath, half-afraid that El just wouldn’t let him in, and felt sick with relief when her heard the locks click almost immediately.

He expected her to snap at him about being late. Instead she just looked up from where she sat on the couch with a book and said, a little hesitantly, “I made dinner.”

And she had, he realized, glancing at the kitchen table. Instead of the usual TV dinners there was a plate for each of them with a sandwich cut jaggedly into triangles and a little pile of potato chips and even some carrot sticks. He noticed that his pile of carrot sticks was considerably bigger than hers, and it prompted the closest thing he’d experienced all day to a smile, even as it made the lump already in his throat seem to double in size.

“Thanks, kid,” he said, his voice coming out strangled-sounding. He was sure she noticed, but she didn’t comment, just stood from the couch to join him at the table.

It should have made him feel better, that she’d gone to the effort of making dinner to try to cheer him up. But instead it just made him feel intensely guilty. She didn’t know that today was a hard day for him. He’d just been cold and distant this morning, without any explanation, and she probably thought that it was her fault, that she’d done something to upset him, and now she was trying to make up for it.

Or maybe she did know. She was watching him carefully, just like she had at breakfast. Eventually, after she’d eaten most of her food and he’d managed to pick a little at his, she asked quietly, “Are you okay?”

Hopper hadn’t cried yet today. His grief for Sara was beyond tears, somehow—it felt less like sadness than a cavernous, gaping whole in his chest. But now he felt a stinging in his eyes and he had to swallow a few times before he trusted himself to answer. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. He wanted to feed her the line about having a cold that he’d rehearsed for breakfast, but he didn’t think he could get any more words out.

“Friends don’t lie,” she said. He’d only ever heard that line in the middle of an argument, when she said it accusingly, angrily. Now, though, her voice was almost gentle.

And that was more than he could handle. He dropped his face into his hands so that El couldn’t see the tears escaping down his cheeks, as if his broken, defeated posture was any less incriminating. He took a few deep breaths, trying to get himself under control. When he looked back up, El looked started and uncertain, like a deer in the headlights.

“Today is Sara’s birthday,” he said, voice shaking.

El’s face fell. “Oh,” she said softly.

Hopper knew he couldn’t eat any more without being sick, even though he’d hardly eaten all day. He tried not to let the additional guilt of not finishing El’s meal overwhelmed him. He just needed to go to bed, he thought. He’d ask El to stick to her room for the rest of the evening so he could have some privacy, and things would be a little more bearable tomorrow. He was about to excuse himself from the table when she spoke again, sounding nervous, like she thought he might be angry with her for asking.

“Tell me about her?”

And Hopper hadn’t been expecting that at all, though in retrospect he thought he should have been. Sara was, at least on paper, El’s half-sister. She was closer to a real sister than that girl Kali, who El had run all the way to Chicago to find. And all that El knew about her was that she liked space and had once owned a blue hair tie.

On any other day, Hopper thought he would probably have refused. He couldn’t stand to think about his little girl, much less talk about her. But he’d already spent so long today absorbed in his memories that it seemed silly and selfish to deny her this.

“She…” He didn’t know how to start, had no idea how he could put Sara into words that would do her justice. Then he realized that he maybe didn’t have to. “Come here,” he said, and beckoned for El to follow him as he went to open the basement hatch.

She watched him pull out the box labeled with her name, wide-eyed, and he knew she was probably wondering why she’d never gone through it herself. He knew exactly what was inside this box, but still he had to steel himself before opening it. When he did, he immediately let his eyes fall shut, squeezing back a sudden resurgence of tears.

He took the box to the couch and waited for El to sit down beside him before lifting out the stack of photographs that sat on top. He held them out to her and she took them slowly, careful not to let her fingertips touch them much. He wondered if she had learned that somewhere or if it was instinct.

“Sara,” she whispered, gazing down at the top photograph. Sara must have been four years old in that one, sitting in front of a Christmas tree and wearing a little gingham dress. She wasn’t looking at the camera but at the half-opened present in her lap. She was smiling.

Hopper stared at the picture for a long time before he could make himself speak. “That was Christmas,” he said finally. “The box she’s holding has a new Magna-Doodle in it. She loved her old one so much she wore it out.”

El didn’t look up at him, still gazing at the picture. “What’s a Magna-Doodle?”

“It’s a…it’s something you can draw on with this special pen that lets you erase it so you can use it over and over again.”

El nodded her understanding and flipped to the next picture. Sara was a little older here; it must have been just before her diagnosis. She was a wearing a pink swimsuit and splashing gleefully in a kiddie pool in a yard that Hopper couldn’t identify. Some friend or relative who he hadn’t thought about in years, probably.

“She loved swimming,” he said. “Was so excited when we took her to a real big pool for the first time. Couldn’t wait to go off the diving board.” He didn’t tell El that Sara hadn’t lived long enough to ever go off a diving board. She hadn’t been a strong enough swimmer before she got sick for it to be safe.

“Pretty,” murmured El, her finger hovering over Sara’s laughing face.

Hopper couldn’t speak, so he just nodded.

In the next photo, Sara’s hair was up in pigtails. El looked closely at them, then traced the hair tie on her wrist, and looked up at Hopper for confirmation.

“Yeah,” he said, after swallowing hard. “That’s the one.”

Suddenly El set the photographs aside and leaned against him, wrapping an arm around his middle and laying her head against his shoulder. “I wish I could meet her,” she whispered.

He wrapped an arm around El’s shoulders to pull her closer and kissed the top of her head. “Me too, kid.”

She shifted a little so that she could look up at him. “Can I…” She trailed off, looking hesitant. “Can I call her…sister?”

For a moment, Hopper allowed himself to imagine it: a world in which Sara had survived and he had also somehow ended up with El. They would be close to the same age. He imagined them playing together, arguing, swapping clothes and sharing secrets and all the things that sisters were supposed to do.

“Of course you can.” He was crying again, tears dripping down his cheeks and running into his beard, and he scrubbed them away with his free hand. “She always wanted a sister.”

“Really?”

“Really."

She picked up the stack of photographs again and looked at the next one. Sara sat behind a huge pink cake with four candles in it. “Happy birthday, sister,” whispered El.


	6. Walking Back to Georgia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She's the only one who knows  
>  How it feels when you lose a dream   
> And how it feels when you dream alone.   
> She's the girl who said she loved me   
> On that hot dusty Macon road   
> And if she's still around, I'm gonna settle down   
> With that hard lovin' Georgia girl. _
> 
> Hopper is uninterested in romance and wants nothing to do with Valentine’s Day. El forces him to confront both.

This had to be the coldest day in Hawkins history, Hopper thought as he trudged to the cabin through almost a foot of snow that had hardened almost into ice. He was wearing his thickest gloves and had his hands shoved deep into his pockets and still his fingers were numb within a minute of leaving the car. It was cold enough that he was a little worried about El; the cabin wasn’t very well insulated, and on days like this it sometimes felt like the fire was hardly warming the frigid air at all.

He was relieved when El opened the door for him right away, convinced that a single extra second out on the porch would have given him frostbite. Despite his concerns about the temperature in the cabin, when he stepped inside, the difference was so great he thought he’d never been in a warmer room. Even so, he was shivering even as he pulled off his gloves and coat. He just waved a little at El, who was curled up on the couch with a thick blanket, before going to change into the warmest clothes he owned.

When he emerged from the bathroom, El was at the table, and still had the blanket draped around her shoulders like a cape. He pulled a beer from the fridge and sat down to join her. “Manage not to freeze to death today?” he asked as he peeled the foil off his dinner.

She nodded, and then said, “Valentine’s Day is soon."

“Is that so?” said Hopper, trying not to betray his dread, because he knew exactly where this was going. He’d been expecting her to say something every day since the ads for chocolate and roses had started airing on TV back in the middle of January.

“Yes,” she told him solemnly. “It says on the calendar. And I saw on TV. And Mike told me.”

“Mike told you, huh? And what exactly did he say?”

To her credit—and to Hopper’s slight disappointment—El didn’t blush. She looked him straight in the eye and said, “We have to spend Valentine’s Day together because we’re in love.”

Hopper choked on his beer. He had to pound on his chest while he coughed, and by the time he got his breath back his eyes were streaming. El was still just watching him, apparently completely bemused by his reaction. “You’re _what?_ ”

“We’re in love,” she repeated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Hopper was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “You’re just kids. You’re too young to be in love.”

“But we _are._ ” There was a distinct pout in her expression.

“El,” he began, and then stopped with a sigh. Trying to convince his daughter that Mike Wheeler wasn’t in love with her was probably not the right move here. And trying to convince El that _she_ wasn’t in love with _him_ would be damn near impossible. “Love is…love is for adults,” he said carefully. “I’m not sayin’ you and Mike can’t _like_ each other. He’s clearly nuts over you. But being in love is…that’s a whole different thing, kid.”

“Why?” she asked, and he didn’t miss the note of challenge in her voice.

He probably should have anticipated that question. Off the top of his head, Hopper found that he didn’t really know how to answer. “It’s just different,” he said, knowing even as he said it that El wouldn’t be satisfied with such an insubstantial answer. And as expected, she just crossed her arms and continued to look at him expectantly. He tried again, speaking slowly to minimize the amount that he stumbled over his words. “It’s…more intense,” he said. “If you’re in love, you want to be with the other person all the time. And you want them to know everything about you, no secrets. And even when you’re far away, you never stop thinking them, almost like you need each other to keep living. And it’s _for adults._ ”

El considered this, and then said definitively, “That sounds like Mike and me.”

Which…she had a point, dammit. The kid had called her every night for almost a year without even knowing she was _alive_ , and keeping El from him had resulted in more than one explosive shouting match. And as for no secrets—he’d bet everything he owned that her whole _friends-don’t-lie_ thing had come from Wheeler himself.

“You’re not adults,” he repeated lamely.

“We’re thirteen,” she said, and if Hopper hadn’t been so caught off guard by her declaration of love, he would have laughed. El was different from most thirteen-year-olds in a thousand ways, but apparently the conviction that thirteen was practically grown up was universal.

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if it would provide him any guidance.

“So,” she pressed, apparently taking his lack of response as a concession that she was right. “Can he come over? On Valentine’s Day?”

He wanted to say no. If he was being honest, it scared him a little, how serious she was about this boy. No matter what they’d been through together, they were still too young for the kind of commitment that she was alluding to. But he’d already reluctantly agreed weeks ago that Mike could come over sometimes without the rest of their friends, and to revoke his permission just because of a stupid holiday seemed cruelly arbitrary. “Fine,” he grumbled.

Her eyes lit up, but before she could get too carried away in her excitement, he flashed her his sternest look and leaned toward her a little bit.

“But you are _not_ going to be in your room together, you got that? Living room _only._ And I will be here the entire time.”

El gave him that look where she seemed to be rolling her eyes without actually moving them. “You should go out,” she said.

“You want me to change my mind about letting him come over? You’re not getting left alone together. Don’t push your luck, kid.”

She huffed, and this time she really did roll her eyes. “You should go out for _Valentine’s Day._ ”

He barked out a laugh. “With who?” he asked her.

She looked surprised confused by his reaction. “Joyce,” she said, and the _of course_ was implied by her tone.

He was so startled that for a moment he couldn’t come up with anything to say. He just stared at her before spluttering, “I—Joyce and I aren’t like that, we—”

“Your face is red,” said El, rather smugly.

“ _El,_ ” he admonished her, and then stopped, because she was right, and she was much too smart for whatever bullshit he might tell her.

“You love her.” And the way she said it, it was like it was the simplest thing in the world.

He felt himself sag a bit. There was no point in lying to himself or to her. “Yeah, kid. I do.”

And though she had clearly already known, she looked ecstatic at the admission—and a little triumphant, too, but the dominant emotion in her face was joy. “I knew it!” she exclaimed, grinning widely.

He smiled back at her in spite of himself, a little sheepishly.

“Does she know?” asked El.

At that, he grew serious again. “No,” he said firmly. “And you are not going to tell her, and you are not going to tell your friends, either.” El frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “And don’t tell me friends don’t lie. This isn’t a lie, okay? It’s just…a secret.”

“Why secret?”

“Because…” Hopper struggled to put it into words that would make sense to this girl who seemed to think love was so straightforward and easy. “Joyce has a lot going on. With everything that’s happened—Will, and Bob—she doesn’t need to have this on her mind. And we’re _friends,_ that’s the most important thing. We’re friends first.”

“Me and Mike were friends,” El pointed out.

“Yeah, well.” Hopper rubbed at his temple, not eager to think about El’s relationship with Mike Wheeler any more than was strictly necessary. “Anyway, I don’t even know if she feels that way about me.”

“So ask her,” said El, as if it was that simple.

And maybe it could be. He tried to picture it—going out with Joyce on real dates, not just sharing cigarettes in her kitchen. Settling down with her for real someday. He knew that El already thought of her as a mother. And he could easily imagine himself seeing Will as a son. But nothing was ever that simple, not really. They’d both been divorced, and their relationship had always been complicated, and that was without considering that he’d restrained her while she watched her boyfriend get _eaten_ not five months ago.

“It’s complicated,” he told her.

El just shrugged, a small smile playing on her lips.

“And—” he narrowed his eyes at her—“I’m _serious,_ okay, about not telling anyone. I need you to promise me.”

El crossed her arms, frowning again.

“El. _Promise me._ ”

“Fine,” she said. “I promise.”

“Good girl.” He picked up his fork and pointed it at her dinner, though it had probably gone cold by now. “Come on, let’s eat.”

They both took a few bites in silence before El said, “But you will tell her. Won’t you?”

Hopper put down his fork. “Kid—”

“ _Won’t you?_ ”

She had that look in her eyes—that determination that no one in the world could ever argue with. “Someday,” he said, and he hoped it was the truth.


	7. Operator [That's Not The Way It Feels]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Isn't that the way they say it goes? Well, let's forget all that  
>  And give me the number if you can find it  
> So I can call just to tell 'em I'm fine and to show  
> I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well  
> I only wish my words could just convince myself  
> That it just wasn't real, but that's not the way it feels_
> 
> Hopper hasn’t spoken to his ex-wife in nearly a year and a half. He isn’t satisfied with the way they left things.

It occurred to Hopper suddenly, one day toward the end of February, that he hadn’t spoken to his ex-wife in nearly a year and a half. The realization was startling. The unsolicited drunken calls to Diane had been a part of his life for so long that he could hardly believe he’d stopped doing it without even noticing.

He wondered whether she’d noticed. She must have. He’d done it often enough that she must be surprised not to have heard from him in so long. He swiveled in his chair to look out the window as he thought. He’d hung up on her the last time they spoke, and he was almost certain that she’d been calling him back when he ripped the phone cord out of the wall. Maybe she’d tried to contact him, in the months since, and not been able to.

No, that was unlikely. She would have called him at the station, if she really wanted to talk to him. And why would she? She’d hated his calling, begged him every time not to do it again. She was probably relieved not to hear from him anymore.

And yet…Hopper tried to imagine their positions reversed. If he’d moved on with his life and Diane was the one calling regularly to dredge up haunted memories he was doing his best to leave behind, he would be glad she’d stopped. But he’d also be worried, he thought. If her calls had just ended suddenly, with no explanation and no indication that she was getting better, it would feel more ominous than positive.

Before he could really think it through, Hopper had picked up the phone on his desk and dialed Diane’s number, dimly surprised that he could still recall it instantly even after all this time.

“Hello?”

At the sound of her voice, his mouth ran dry, and he briefly considered just hanging up.

“…Hello? Is anyone there?”

He cleared his throat. “Hey, it’s, uh…it’s Jim.”

There was a surprised silence on the other side. His chest ached when he realized that he could picture the exact face she was making, confused and a little incredulous. After a few seconds she said uncertainly, “Jim! Hi.”

This had been a terrible idea. He’d had no reason to believe she was worried about him, and her surprise at hearing from him indicated pretty clearly that she hadn’t exactly been waiting for him to call. And that stung a little, for some reason. He didn’t have or want her love anymore, and certainly didn’t want her pity, but it had been a bit of a comfort in his darkest moments to know that she did, at least, still care about him, even if their marriage couldn’t survive the grief. But maybe that care had dissipated too.

“Jim?”

“Yeah, hi, sorry. Sorry.” Not for the first time, he instinctively reached to fidget with the hair tie before remembering that it was on El’s wrist now. “I, uh…look, I’m sorry for calling.”

There was another short silence and then Diane said, “It’s okay.” And to his surprise and relief, she sounded like she meant it. “Are you…is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you in awhile.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I just…” He was unsure how to articulate even to himself why he’d decided to call her. “Wanted to check in. See how things are going.” And that wasn’t it, exactly, but it was close enough. “How is…”

“Ryan,” Diane supplied when he trailed off. “He’s…good. He’s about nineteen months now.”

Ryan. Hopper tried to imagine Diane with another baby. She’d been so scared when Sara was that little, worried constantly that she’d mess something up and make a terrible mother. Her fear had been misplaced, of course. He wondered if she was that afraid now.

“Is anything new with you?”

Hopper almost laughed at that. For a wild moment, he considered telling her about El—how dangerous could it possibly be, with Diane all the way back in New York? But it was still a risk, and they didn’t take risks. “Not much,” he told her. But then he remembered part of his reason for calling, and added, truthfully, “I’ve been…doing better.”

Maybe he was imagining it, but he thought he could hear a little bit of a smile as she said, “That’s great, Jim.” She seemed sincere, at least.

And her approval made him feel like he’d suddenly set down a weight he had’t even realized he was carrying. It hadn’t even occurred to him, throughout all his guilt over loving another child after Sara, that Diane would understand better than anyone. It would be a long time before she could know about El, but even so, that Sara’s mother didn’t lash out at him for being happy again meant more to him than he had expected it would.

“Listen, Diane—” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I know you don’t like me calling. I won’t do it anymore, okay? I just thought, after last time…I didn’t want that to be the last time you heard from me, you know?”

“I get it,” said Diane softly, and he knew that she did. “It’s okay, Jim, really.”

“But I wanted to say…I meant what I said, then. I don’t regret it. And I also…” He swallowed hard against the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “I don’t regret how things turned out, either. And I hope…I hope you feel the same.”

When Diane answered, she sounded a little tearful herself. “I do.”

“Good,” said Hopper. “I’m glad you’re happy. Really.”

“And are you? You said you’re doing better, and I’m glad, but…are you happy?”

Hopper looked around his office. An outsider wouldn’t be able to detect any difference, but the mug on his desk had been a Christmas gift from El, ordered to Joyce’s house from a catalogue that Mike had brought her. The Thermos he’d brought for lunch was filled with leftovers from dinner with the Byers last night. And there was a Star Wars-themed calendar from the boys that Flo had insisted he pin to the wall despite his grumblings.

“I’m getting there,” he told her, honestly.

—

That night, as he watched TV with El, he felt lighter than he had in a long time. It hadn’t occurred to him, before Diane asked, to describe himself as happy. He was so used to depression and guilt and self-loathing that it surprised him to realize how much he had changed in the past year.

When she leaned into his side and laid her head on his shoulder, as she did so often lately, he wrapped an arm around her and pressed a kiss to her air almost absently, marveling in how normal it now felt to him.

There would always be the pain of Diane and of Sara. It didn’t really feel any smaller than it had five years ago. But now the pain wasn’t all he had.


	8. Time in a Bottle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If I could save time in a bottle  
>  The first thing that I'd like to do  
> Is to save every day  
> 'Til eternity passes away  
> Just to spend them with you_
> 
> Hawkins is finally warming up, so Hopper and El take the opportunity to spend some time outside.

As winter began to thaw into an uneasy spring, El’s cabin fever worsened considerably. It hadn’t been quite as bad last year, when she was still scared enough to stay inside without complaint, but now Hopper came home almost every evening to find her sitting as close to the windows as she could get, peering through a tiny gap in the curtains to the world outside. It didn’t help that her friends had started spending more and more time outdoors. To Hopper’s eyes, the kids still seemed thrilled when they got to see El, more than content to play board games inside with her even on beautiful spring days, but he could tell that she was starting to worry that they would one day grow bored of house arrest and abandon her so that they could play outside instead.

On one morning at the beginning of April, Hopper woke early to find himself alone in the cabin. The door to El’s room was ajar, and when he peaked in, he found her bed neatly made and conspicuously empty.

“El?” he called, heart rate picking up immediately. He turned to check the bathroom, but that door, too, was open, and El was nowhere to be seen. “El!”

Was it possible she’d been taken? Had they found her at last? Surely no one could have broken in overnight; the cabin was too small and he was far too light a sleeper for them to have come and gone unnoticed. Unless he’d been drugged? Instinctively, he ran his hands over his neck, feeling for a bump. There was nothing.

“ _El!_ ” he called again. “Come on, kid, this isn’t funny, where the hell are you—”

He broke off when he realized that the locks on the front door were all undone. For a single moment that felt like it lasted a lifetime, he just stared at them, rooted to the spot. There was no sign of a forced entry. She must have just…left. She must have finally gotten tired of her captivity and run away, just like she had all those months ago, and it was foolish to hope she’d return to him a second time.

Heart in his throat, he threw open the door, not even thinking to put on anything over the t-shirt he’d slept in, or even a pair of shoes. He ran out onto the porch, frantic, and immediately almost tripped over El.

She was sitting on the steps, looking at him over her shoulder, startled by the banging of the door as it bounced against the side of the cabin. She too was barefoot, wearing only thin pajama pants and a t-shirt with a blanket draped over her shoulders.

Hopper felt so dizzy with relief that he had to clutch the porch railing with both hands. He bent his head low, squeezing his eyes shut, and tried to control his breathing.

“Are you…okay?” El asked after a few seconds, a little nervously.

Hopper turned his head to look at her, still leaning on the railing. “What the _hell,_ ” he growled through clenched teeth, “are you doing out here.”

She at least had the good sense to look ashamed, lowering her gaze to her knees before mumbling, “I didn’t think you’d wake up.”

As if that was any kind of an answer. “You didn’t—Jesus, El, how is that _better?_ You think being outside is safer if I’m _asleep?_ ”

She just shrugged and drew the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“Is this what you do every day when I’m at work? Wander around outside without me knowing? Do you have _any idea—_ ” he was standing more upright now, propelled toward her by the force of his sudden fury— “how _fucking stupid_ that is?”

El had drawn away from him a bit, perched now on the very edge of the steps. “Not every day,” she said hotly, any trace of shame gone as she shifted into anger of her own. She was glaring at him, arms crossed. “Never during the day! Just mornings. Before you wake up.”

“Before—” He realized that he’d started yelling somewhere in there and forced the words back, trying to get control of his temper. It would hardly help him make his point about security if he was shouting loudly enough for all of Hawkins to hear. He tried again a little more calmly. “Before I wake up? Do you do this every morning?”

“You usually sleep later,” said El. “I…” She looked down at her lap again and muttered, “I’m sorry I scared you.”

At that, Hopper felt his anger drain away as quickly as it had come, leaving him feeling exhausted and somewhat raw. He sighed and sat down heavily on the steps beside her. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

He watched El picking at a thread in her blanket for awhile before she spoke again. “I need to be outside,” she said quietly. “I can’t…”

“I know,” said Hopper, because he did. And really, he thought, this was his fault. He’d made an effort last spring and summer to take her out as much as he could, just for short walks near the cabin, but he’d been so busy lately that he’d let that fall by the wayside a bit. And with her friends coming around more, it hadn’t really occurred to him that even more company couldn’t replace her need to be outside. Her need for fresh air and nature was independent from her need for Mike Wheeler and the rest of them. “Look, I’m sorry. I haven’t been thinking. I should have been taking you out more.”

But if anything, she just looked unhappier at that. “I don’t want you to take me out,” she said. “I just want to…be out. I want…” She huffed, frustrated at being unable to articulate it, and dropped the thread she’d been pulling on.

Hopper understood, though. “You want independence,” he said softly.

She looked up at him. “Independence?”

“Yeah. I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-C-E. It means you have freedom, you can go outside or wherever whenever you want to, you don’t have to wait for me to take you out on walks like a dog.”

El nodded her understanding. “Independence,” she repeated, tasting the word. Then she asked him, “When will I have have independence?”

Hopper sighed. _Soon,_ he wanted to say, but that word had become something of a taboo in their household. Then he thought this was as good a time as any to discuss with her some of the things he’d been thinking about. He hadn’t wanted to say anything, not before it was all for certain, but she looked so defeated and he thought it would do her good to have a concrete hope to hold onto.

“I told you Doc Owens said a year, remember?” he began.

She nodded, but looked even more upset at the reminder.

“Well, I’ve been thinking for awhile now—and this is _not_ a promise, okay, I can’t guarantee anything—but I’ve been thinking that maybe we could make it a little less than that. We’ve talked about you goin’ to school, right, when this is all over?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes had widened at the mention of spending less than a year inside. “Yes,” she whispered, daring to look a little bit hopeful.

“Well, the Doc and I have talked about it a bit, and we think it _might_ be safe for you to start at the beginning of this year, with the rest of the kids. Instead of waiting till November or December.”

Her eyes were now so wide it was a wonder they didn’t just fall out of her head. “Really?” she breathed.

“Like I said, it’s not a promise,” he repeated firmly. “But we’re trying, okay? And if works out, that means you’ll have a bit of independence starting around August.”

“And…if it doesn’t work out?”

“Then we’ll shoot for later in the fall, just like we planned. Look,” he added, when her face fell a little, “I know it’s a long time, kid. I wish we could make it even sooner. But we’ll get through this, yeah?”

“Yes,” said El, and finally smiled, just a tiny bit.

Hopper smiled back at her. “Now come on, let’s get some breakfast going.”

—

He went out for a walk with her later that morning. It wasn’t enough—it wasn’t independence—but she seemed content as she picked her way through the thick trees. The chill that had prompted El to bring a blanket outside that morning was entirely gone, and the air was uncharacteristically warm and balmy for early April. Though the sky was mostly blocked out by the trees, what little Hopper could see of it was a clear, piercing blue.

“What’s that?” asked El, pointing at a little cluster of yellow flowers that had bloomed in a small clearing.

“That’s, uh…” Hopper crouched down to look at them more closely. El did the same, mirroring his movements as she so often did. “Trillium, I think?”

“Trillium,” El repeated, gazing wistfully at the flowers. She reached out to stroke a petal.

“You wanna pick some?” he suggested. “We could put them in a vase. Or a glass, anyway.”

El looked like she was considering the suggestion carefully, and then shook her head. “They should keep growing.”

“Okay.” Hopper was certain that the look on his face was disgustingly fond. Then he had an idea. “How about I get you something else to plant at the cabin? Something that’ll grow well inside.”

El nodded, smiling. Then she stood to keep walking.

They walked for nearly an hour, Hopper paying careful attention that they were making a big loop around the cabin rather than getting too far away from it. Mostly they maintained a comfortable, peaceful silence, except for when El would point at a pretty plant and ask what it was.

“Why don’t I find you a book about plants?” he said after the third or fourth time he’d been unable to identify one for her. “Then you can teach _me_ what all these are.”

“Yes,” she said happily.

Eventually they reached a tiny pond that he’d taken her to a few times before. The water was a little cold for Hopper’s taste—and he didn’t like the idea of shoving wet feet back into his boots anyway—but El stripped off her socks and shoes and waded in so that the water came to just above her ankles. She turned in place, wiggling her toes against the sandy bottom of the pond, and giggled.

“You gonna catch us some dinner in there?” asked Hopper, laughing when she looked startled at the suggestion. “I’m kidding, kid. I doubt there’s any fish in that pond anyway.”

El wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like fish.”

Joyce had tried to make tilapia last time they ate dinner at her house. Though he’d scolded El that night for turning her nose up at it, Hopper had to admit to himself that it had been pretty inedible. He decided to let El believe that all fish were gross, rather than telling her that it was just Joyce’s abysmal cooking that had made it so hard to eat.

He let her splash around in the little pond for as long as she wanted, settling on a sturdy-looking log to watch her. When she eventually grew tired of it, he crouched just on the edge and let her hold onto his shoulders so that she could shake her feet dry one at a time and tug her socks and shoes back on without losing her balance. “You ready to head back?” he asked. “I think it’s about lunchtime.”

She looked a little crestfallen, but nodded. They were quiet again as they headed back to the cabin. Hopper found himself watching her more than the scenery as she looked around, still as amazed as she’d been when they first went out, soaking it all in.

What wouldn’t he give, he thought, to let every day be like this one. If he could, he would freeze this morning in time so that they could both live it over and over. There would be no bad men, no looming danger, no traumatic memories or grief or anger. No work responsibilities or fumbling teenage romance. Just him and his daughter, reveling in the innocent pleasure of a beautiful morning.

When they came in sight of the cabin, he felt El’s hand find its way into his. He squeezed it instinctively, and then looked down at her questioningly.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” she said quietly.

“Hey, no more apologies. I mean, you shouldn’t go out without me anymore, but I’m not mad.”

She looked up at him. “I don’t mean that.”

“Oh?” He waited patiently for her to elaborate, and after a pause during which he knew she was trying to put the words together, she did.

“I didn’t—when I said I don’t want you to take me out. I didn’t mean…I _do_ want you to take me out. I just want…not only that.”

He smiled down at her. “It’s okay, kid. I understand.”

“I like going out with you. Like this.”

“Yeah? Me too.”

“Not independence,” she said. “But still good.”

Hopper squeezed her hand a little tighter. “Yeah, kid. Real good.”


	9. Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Oh rapid Roy that stock car boy  
>  He too much too believe  
> You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes  
> Rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve  
> He got a tattoo on his arm that say baby  
> He got another one that just say hey  
> But every Sunday afternoon he is a dirt track demon  
> In a '57 Chevrolet_
> 
> El isn’t happy with some of Mike’s choices. Hopper just finds the whole thing funny, mostly.

Hopper put down his newspaper and glanced at El’s door when the quiet murmuring of her and Mike talking over the radio was interrupted by a loud thud, followed by an ominous silence. “Hey, kid?” he called. “You okay in there?” When she didn’t answer, he stood up from the couch with a groan, more annoyed than worried at her lack of response, and went to knock. “El,” he said through the door, “you gotta answer me or I’m comin’ in.”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, her voice muffled but not so much that he couldn’t hear her irritation.

She certainly didn’t sound fine, but she also didn’t sound hurt or sad or like she was in the middle of a panic attack, so he left her to her teenage dramatics and returned to his coffee and newspaper. Mike was supposed to come over in a couple hours and the rest of the kids were joining later in the afternoon, so he was going to enjoy as much of this peaceful Sunday as he could before the tiny cabin was overtaken by five more middle schoolers who made El look dainty and tranquil by comparison.

But then eleven-thirty came and went without any sign of the Wheeler kid, who Hopper had never known to be a minute late when coming to visit El. He frowned, realizing that El had also not emerged from her room when normally she would be standing at the front window watching for him ten minutes before he was due to arrive.

He went to her door again. “Open up,” he called as he knocked.

“Go away,” said El.

He sighed. “Alright, well, I’m gonna make lunch, and you’re gonna come out here and eat it whether you like it or not.”

He heard her huff through the door and smiled ruefully to himself. He hated to see El in a bad mood for any reason, but if he was correct that this was about some kind of drama between her and Mike, he had to admit he was a little glad she was upset about something so normal. That felt like progress. Not that he was glad Mike had done something to hurt her—if that was the case, he’d be kicking the kid’s ass next time he saw him.

El finally left her room as Hopper was setting their lunches on the table and slid into her seat with a stony expression. She didn’t even look up at him as she started eating her sandwich, just glowered down at her plate.

Hopper watched her with raised eyebrows. “So,” he said after a few minutes of silence, “no Mike today?”

Her glare deepened and she bit into a carrot stick with unnecessary force. “Not coming,” she muttered.

“Yeah, I figured as much. What’s goin’ on with you two? Trouble in paradise?”

But maybe joking about it hadn’t been the greatest move on his part. El looked a little hurt at his words and he sighed, rubbing his forehead. Teenage drama was certainly preferable to PTSD, but he felt no more equipped to deal with it.

“You wanna tell me what’s wrong?” he asked, more gently.

El shrugged and then, after a pause, bit out, “Grounded.”

“Mike’s grounded?” She didn’t answer, but the bitter look on her face seemed to be a confirmation. “Well…that’s good, right?”

She looked up at him. “Good?” she asked, a little incredulously.

“Yeah. I mean, if he’s grounded that means he still _wants_ to be here. So it’s not like you two are fighting or anything.”

She shrugged again, not looking any less glum. “Stupid,” she muttered.

He chuckled a little. “Sometimes being grounded is good for you.” He took a sip of beer. “Builds character, or something. What’d he get busted for?”

“Stupid,” she said again, but didn’t seem inclined to tell him.

Hopper just looked at her expectantly until she relented.

“Smoking.”

He choked on the sip of beer he’d just taken. “ _What?_ ”

She glared at him, knowing perfectly well he’d heard her the first time.

He was having a difficult time not laughing. He himself had taken up smoking even younger, but he wouldn’t have expected the scrawny, nerdy Wheeler kid to be sneaking cigarettes. It was difficult to imagine sweet, fumbling little Mike hanging around a back street somewhere with a pack of smokes. But then again, if he replaced the version of Mike he usually saw around the cabin with the rage-filled kid who’d screamed and pummeled him the night El closed the gate, it wasn’t so hard to imagine. He tried to cover his amusement with a genuine question. “Where the hell did he get cigarettes? I don’t see his parents smoking.”

El hesitated, clearly torn about whether to tell him. But apparently her friends-don’t-lie code of ethics outweighed her reluctance to snitch on any more of her friends. “Max stole some from Billy.”

It was much easier to picture Max smoking. And he certainly didn’t feel any indignation on Billy’s behalf. He just shook his head in bemusement, still trying not to smile.

El seemed to pick up on his amusement, though, and if anything it just seemed to make her angrier. “Why aren’t you mad?”

“Mad? Hell, kid, everyone does crap like that when they’re fourteen. But,” he added, trying to make his voice sound a little more menacing, “if I ever catch _you_ with a cigarette, it won’t be pretty.”

She rolled her eyes and Hopper wondered whether he should feel worse about the fact that he apparently didn’t inspire even the slightest fear in her anymore. She still seemed upset, though, more than he would have expected from her. It wasn’t as if she had any particular moral stance against smoking; at least, if she did, she’d managed to hide it pretty well. She’d never commented on Hopper’s habit.

“Is something else bothering you?” he asked her.

There was a long pause in which he could see El trying to put together the words she needed. Eventually she said, “He did it even though it means he can’t come see me.” She was swinging her feet, scuffing the toes of her shoes rather aggressively against the floor. “I am…less important to him. Than smoking.”

“Ah, kid,” sighed Hopper. “Look, he probably wasn’t expecting to get busted. He didn’t _know_ it would mean he can’t visit you.”

“But why…” She trailed off, looking lost and hurt.

“Why would he risk it?”

She nodded.

“I dunno, kid. Boys his age, they…I’m not sayin' what he did was good, okay? He shouldn’t’ve done it and his parents were right to ground him. But a lot of kids’ll start doing stuff like that. He probably just wanted to feel like, you know, like a bit of a bad boy.”

She looked alarmed at that. “Like the bad men?”

“No, no, no,” Hopper said quickly, regretting his choice of words. “No—sometimes _bad_ just means a kid who likes breaking the rules a little. A kid who likes a little rebellion.”

“Rebellion,” she echoed.

“Yeah, rebellion. You know, smoking and drinking when you’re not old enough, sneaking out of the house, that kinda thing. Stuff that’s supposed to make you look…cool, I guess. And older than you really are.” He decided not to add that, in his experience, being a bad boy had also meant getting with as many girls as possible. It would be silly to introduce that worry to her, especially when he was pretty sure that Mike hardly noticed that girls other than El even existed.

El looked thoughtful. Then she said, “Like Roy.”

“Roy?” echoed Hopper blankly. “Who’s Roy?”

She gave him that look that she did when she thought he was being especially dense. “Rapid Roy.”

Then Hopper started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt, and all the while El just looked at him like he was insane, which made him laugh even harder. Finally he got himself enough under control to speak. “Yeah, kid,” he gasped out, wiping his streaming eyes on his sleeve. “Just like Rapid Roy.”

“Funny?” she asked, looking confused.

“No. No, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I laughed so much. Just—we need to get you some newer music, I think. Can’t have an old Jim Croce song being your only reference for a bad boy.”

She shrugged, unconcerned. “I like that song.”

“Me too,” he said, grinning at her. Then he lowered his voice and said more seriously, “Look, kid, I’m sorry Mike isn’t coming today. But don’t let this worry you too much, okay? The kid’s clearly head over heels for you. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

She blushed, but he’d managed to coax a small smile from her. “Okay.” Then she frowned again and said, “I don’t want Mike to be a bad boy. I like normal Mike.”

Hopper couldn’t help chuckling again. “El, you ran off to Chicago on your own to get a whole punk makeover. You’re already more of a bad boy than Mike Wheeler will ever be. So, just, cut him some slack, okay?”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile was a little bigger that time. Hopper reached over to ruffle her hair affectionately.

“Come on,” he said, “finish up your lunch. And then I know what song we’re gonna dance to until the rest of your friends get here.”

El took a bite of her sandwich and then, with her mouth full, started to hum the chorus.


	10. Box #10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hello Mama and Dad, I had to call collect  
>  'Cause I ain't got a cent to my name  
> Well I'm sleepin' in the hotel doorway  
> And tonight they say it's gonna rain  
> And if you'd only send me some money  
> I'll be back on my feet again_
> 
> El celebrates her birthday for the first time, and knows exactly what she wants.

The date on El’s birth certificate wasn’t her real birthday. It would be safer, Owens had said, to make it completely different, just in case anyone started to suspect. It hadn’t made a difference to El; she’d never celebrated a birthday in her life, real or otherwise.

Still, Hopper wanted to make the day special for her, even if it was completely arbitrary. That she hadn’t ever gotten a birthday party hardly registered on the long list of abuses she’d suffered in the lab, but for some reason, it was the little details like that that made Hopper’s heart ache for her. So one evening in late May, a week before the date that Owens had picked for her birthday, Hopper asked her after dinner what she wanted to do.

“For my birthday?” said El, eyes wide.

“Yeah, your birthday. It’s next week, on the third, remember? So is there anything special you wanna do?”

She was looking at him in awe. “I can do…anything?”

“Sure, anything. Well,” he added, realizing that wasn’t actually quite true, “we still have to be safe about it. You can’t just be running around Hawkins. But you could have a party here with your friends, or I could take you out somewhere farther away, where no one knows us.”

She thought about it, looking like it was the most serious decision she’d ever made. Then she said, in a small voice, “Can I visit Mama?”

That wasn’t what Hopper had expected. They’d gone to see Terry and Becky a handful of times, but the visits weren’t ever happy, exactly. El would talk to her aunt for a few minutes and then spend most of the time sitting next to her mother, holding her hand and murmuring to her quietly, while Hopper and Becky sat in the kitchen. Hopper didn’t know what El talked about, but she was always quiet and sad on the way home and more withdrawn than usual for the next few days. He wasn’t sure these visits were healthy for her, really. But who was he to deny her the chance to see her mother on her birthday?

“Sure, kid,” he said. “I’ll call your Aunt Becky to make sure she’s around on your birthday and we can go out there for a few hours, how’s that sound?”

El nodded, not looking happy so much as satisfied.

“Also,” Hopper continued, “what do you want for your birthday?”

“Something else?” El asked tentatively.

“Yeah, a present. Like we did on Christmas, remember? People do that for birthdays, too. So is there anything you’ve been dying to have?”

“Anything?” she asked again.

“Well, within reason,” he said, though he already knew he was going to spend the next few years spoiling the kid rotten.

She seemed to be carefully considering it. After awhile, she opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again, looking troubled. “I don’t know,” she said eventually.

Hopper smiled to put her at ease. He supposed it was a bit overwhelming for her, being told she could do anything and have anything that she wanted. “That’s okay, kid,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

—

She had been excited all morning the day of her birthday, bouncing with energy and as talkative as she ever was, but on the drive to the Ives’ house El grew quiet. Hopper opened his mouth to speak a few times, but each time he stopped himself. She was gazing out the window at the passing country, looking pensive and a little sad, and he couldn’t think of anything to say that felt right. He still hadn’t really figured out how to talk to her about her mother. He wasn’t sure she even wanted to talk.

Becky greeted them at the door and pulled El into a hug, just as she always did. “Happy birthday, sweetie,” she said with a smile, pulling back to hold El at arm’s length and look her up and down. “Feel any older?”

El shrugged. Hopper didn’t bother to point out that, technically, she’d been fourteen for a few months already.

Selfishly, he hoped this visit would be brief. The first couple times had been okay; there had been a lot to fill Becky in on while El talked to her mother. The last time, though, they’d run out of things to say on the subject of El’s childhood and the lab, and quickly discovered that they had little else in common. Now they just sat in the kitchen smoking in silence, both pretending that they weren’t straining to distinguish El’s words from the other room.

After a little over an hour, El wandered back into the kitchen, looking just as forlorn as she always did at the end of these visits.“Ready to go?” Hopper asked, and she nodded.

She stayed quiet all through Becky’s affectionate farewell, too, managing only a soft monosyllabic goodbye as they went out the door. For the first time that day, Hopper became a little bit worried. He expected El to be a little off, just as she always was when they came out here, but usually she exchanged at least a few minutes of conversation with her aunt. Today, though, she hardly seemed willing to open her mouth.

He drove for a few minutes in silence before asking her about it. “Something on your mind, kid? You’re awfully quiet.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “You know you can talk to me. Whatever it is.”

In his peripheral vision he saw El turn toward him, and when he glanced over at her she seemed to be struggling with what to say. He didn’t press her, just let her work it out on her own. Finally, she said, “I don’t have parents.”

Hopper frowned. “Of course you do. We just visited your mom, didn’t we?”

“No, I—she’s not like a mama, really. I mean—” Hopper could hear the guilt in her voice for saying that about Terry, and the pain. “She _is_ my mama, and I love her, but she can’t…” She trailed off, but Hopper understood. “And Papa wasn’t really my papa.”

“No,” he said darkly, “he wasn’t.” But then he glanced away from the road again and was startled to see tears in her eyes. “Hey,” he said more gently, taking a hand off the wheel to clasp her shoulder, “hey, what’s this about, huh?”

“I…” She looked away from him, out the window, and he could see her biting in her lip in the reflection. “I want parents,” she said, so quietly that Hopper could barely hear her.

She sounded so small and so sad that it broke Hopper’s heart. He pulled over to the side of the road, deciding that this was a conversation for which he should be able to make real eye contact with her. Once he stopped the car, though, he had no idea what to say. Eventually, he said hesitantly, knowing that it could never be enough, “You have me.” And if he was being honest with himself, it hurt a little to hear that she didn’t consider him a parent. More than a little. Even aside from the fact that, on paper, he was her biological father, he’d thought she had come to see him at least as a sort of father figure. But maybe he’d been wrong about that.

El took a deep, shaky breath and turned back to him. She opened her mouth, closed it again, swallowed hard. “I know,” she said. “But…”

He cut her off before she could finish. If she didn’t see him as a parent, he could live with that, but he didn’t think he could handle her _saying_ it to him. So he preempted it himself. “I know I’m not…good at this,” he said. “I’m sorry, kid. I wish I could be like a real parent to you. And if you want…” He took a deep breath. She’d seemed happy when he showed her the birth certificate, so happy she’d asked to keep it displayed on the wall, and that had put to rest his fear that she’d rather live with someone else. But now, with this conversation, he was beginning to wonder if maybe he hadn’t horribly misread the situation. Was this why she’d been so quiet today, and wanted to see her real mother? Was she trying to figure out a way to tell him that she wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere away from him? “If this, if being with me, if you want something other than that…”

But El was shaking her head. “No,” she said firmly, and Hopper felt such a rush of relief that he had to force himself to keep listening to her next words. “I meant…” She took another deep breath and he could see her steeling herself, looking determined. Then she said, “I know what I want for my birthday.”

He blinked at her, confused by the sudden change in subject. He’d already gotten her a birthday present, of course. That morning, she’d unwrapped a few new books and a stack of paper and a box of colored pencils. “What?”

“Can you be Dad?” she said in a rush.

There was something funny happening to his chest, like his lungs were contracting even as his heart swelled almost painfully. “What?” he said again, his voice strangled.

El repeated herself more slowly.“Can you…be Dad?”

And he’d already adopted her, was already her father on paper, so he knew there was only one thing she could possibly mean. “You want to call me Dad?” he whispered.

She nodded, looking both hopeful and terrified.

“I…” He blinked back the tears that had suddenly sprung to his eyes and tried to speak around the lump in his throat. “Of course you can, kid. Of course.”

El’s face broke into a watery grin. “Dad,” she said, testing the word.

It shouldn’t have made a difference, Hopper thought, whether she called him Hopper or Hop or Dad, as long as she was with him. He’d thought of her as a daughter for so long that this should have just felt like a formality more than anything else. But it did make a difference. He reached for her, turning awkwardly in his seat to pull her into a hug. It made such a huge difference that he felt lightheaded with it. He was a dad again, for real, in every sense.

“Dad,” she said again, face pressed into his shoulder. “Dad.”

He was crying into her hair and he knew she could probably tell, but he didn’t care in the slightest. He held for a long time before lowering his head to kiss her cheek and then pulling away. He wiped at the moisture on his face with a watery little laugh, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw El do the same. 

It was El’s birthday, not his. But he felt like he was the one who had been given the greatest gift imaginable.


	11. A Long Time Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I was so afraid to touch you  
>  Thought you were too young to know  
> So I just watched you sleeping  
> Then you woke and said to me  
> The night is cold it frightens me  
> I could sleep so easy next to you_
> 
> El still has nightmares. Hopper is still there, always.

Hopper woke suddenly, and then immediately squeezed his eyes shut against the unexpected brightness. He fumbled blindly for the lamp next to his bed. “The hell…” He wasn’t sure how he could have fallen asleep with the light on. He never did that, not unless he’d passed out in a drunken stupor, but that wasn’t something he did anymore. He hadn’t had more than two beers at a time since El—

“ _Shit,_ ” he hissed to himself, suddenly awake enough to realize what was going on. As he blinked away the last of his disoriented confusion, the light began to flick on and off as if in confirmation. He tore back the quilt and threw his legs over the edge of the bed, and just as he was standing up, the light went out with a loud pop.

It had scared the living daylights out of him, the first time this happened—he’d thought that someone had broken in, that the men from the lab were about to seize him and snatch El. When he’d realized it was El herself making the lights flicker, the fear had quickly turned to fury. He’d thought she was trying to contact someone, the way she had in that pool. And that would have put them both in danger.

But then he’d burst into El’s room to find her fast asleep, writhing in pain and breathing shallowly, and his fury had melted into something else entirely.

Now he opened El’s door carefully, having realized after the first few nightmares that sudden loud noises only made things worse. All of her blankets had been kicked to the end of the bed and she was curled up tightly with her knees to her chest and her hands gripping her hair. She wasn’t screaming—she never did—but her breath came in loud, ragged, whimpering gasps.

“El,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage, crossing the room quickly to sit on the edge of her bed. “El, come on, wake up. It’s just a dream, honey. You’re dreaming.”

The lamp next to her bed started flickering and she screwed up her face, her eyes squeezed shut impossibly more tightly. Her entire body was shaking, Hopper realized, trembling so violently it seemed impossible that her bones could withstand it.

“ _El,_ ” he said more loudly. “You’re safe, you’re safe, and I’m right here, I just need you to wake up for me, sweetheart, just open your eyes, you’re home and I’m right here and everything is okay…”

It wasn’t working. Her breath was coming faster, the whimpering growing louder, and the lights were beginning to flicker more insistently. He felt his eyes burn with tears as he watched her tremble with an imaginary pain that he was powerless to take away. He was afraid to touch her. He’d tried that once and she’d thrown him across the room. He would have been happy to spend the next few days battered and bruised if it meant she woke up, but she hadn’t; the contact had just plunged her deeper into her nightmare and the unconscious use of her powers had made her all the more exhausted upon waking.

“Come on, sweetheart, come on, you just need to _wake up—_ ”

Her eyes snapped open and she drew away from him so suddenly and violently that it was as if some invisible force had pulled her back. The lights had all stopped flickering as soon as she opened her eyes and Hopper, squinting in the sudden darkness, could barely see the outline of her shaking form pressed up against the headboard. He reached over and turned on her lamp, which, now that it was operating normally and not glowing with supernatural power, filled the room with a warm, gentle light.

“Hey,” he said, speaking much more quietly now that she was awake. “You’re okay. It’s okay.”

El shook her head, looking wildly around the room as if she would find someone or something other than Hopper tucked away in a corner.

“Look at me, honey.” He decided it was probably safe to touch her now and he reached out to put a hand lightly on her knee. She flinched, but didn’t push him away, which he supposed was a good sign. “Just look at me, can you do that?”

Slowly, so that she would have time to move away if it was too much, he moved his hand up to her cheek to gently turn her face toward his.

“Good, good,” he murmured. “Now can you breathe with me? In…and out. In…and out. Nice deep breaths, that’s it.”

But her eyes were rapidly filling with tears and she hadn’t stopped shaking and even though she was maintaining eye contact a little more now, she stillkept glancing around with genuine fear in her eyes. “The bad men—”

“—are gone,” Hopper finished, firmly. “They’re gone, El, and they aren’t coming back.”

“The lab—”

He felt his heart break as she was cut off by a hiccuping sob. He moved a little closer to her so that he could run his hand up and down her arm, hoping the contact might help to ground her a little. “Tell me where we are,” he said.

“What?” she said tearfully.

“Just look around, and tell me where we are.”

She looked around the room again, as if trying to confirm that she wasn’t just imagining it. “We’re at home,” she whispered finally.

“That’s right. We’re at home. And where is home?”

“In—in the cabin. In the woods. Way…way the hell out here.”

Hopper tried to smile at her, even though he wanted to cry himself. “Exactly. Way the hell out here. We’re home, and we’re safe, and no one is going to find us. Not the bad men from the lab or anyone else. You’re _safe._ ”

“Promise?” she whispered.

Hopper squeezed her arm. “I _promise._ ”

At that, the last of the tension drained out of her body, and she leaned forward to bury her face against her drawn-up knees. With her face hidden, she started to cry in earnest.

“Oh, honey,” he murmured, and gently pulled her into his arms. He rubbed circles on her back with one hand and with the other cradled her head against his chest. “Shh, shh. It’s okay.” She wrapped her arms around his middle and clung tightly, fingers clutching at the back of his t-shirt. He rocked her a little, continuing to whisper soft reassurances into her hair, until she seemed to be out of tears.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asked after awhile. He felt her shake her head against him and her grip became a little tighter. “Okay,” he said soothingly. “You don’t have to.”

She really probably should, he thought. She’d shared so little with him about her time in the lab and almost never divulged the contents of her nightmares, and keeping it bottled up couldn’t possibly be healthy. Not for the first time, he wished that it was possible to get her a real therapist. But even once she was out in the open, who could she talk to honestly without putting herself in danger?

“You know you _can_ tell me,” he said quietly. “If you ever want to. I’ll always be here.”

“I know,” she said, her voice muffled in his shirt. “But I don’t—I can’t—”

“It’s okay if you’re not ready. But someday, when you are…it might help, you know?”

He felt her take a deep breath and nod. Then he glanced up at the clock hanging on her wall. It was not quite three in the morning, far too early to just abandon the idea of sleeping for the rest of the night.

“Hey,” he said, still rubbing her back, “you think you can try to get back to sleep?” She tightened her arms around him again and said nothing. He sighed. “We can’t stay like this all night, kid. And you need to get some rest.”

“I can’t,” she said pleadingly.

He sighed again. Now that the adrenaline from seeing her hurting had worn off, he could feel his eyes itching with exhaustion, and he knew he couldn’t afford to take the day off work tomorrow. “I need you to try, sweetheart. For me.” Before she could protest, he extricated himself from her arms as gently as he could and stood, pulling the covers back up from where they lay tangled at the foot of the bed. He tried to ignore the pang of guilt he felt as she blinked up at him with her wide brown eyes, swollen and red-rimmed and filled with a seemingly infinite unhappiness. He leaned over to kiss the top of her head. “You want me to leave the light on?”

“Stay,” she begged him. “Please, Dad.”

She was a smart kid. She’d definitely figured out by now that he was powerless to deny her anything when she called him Dad. It did something funny to his heart that made him completely incapable of contradicting her, which was probably something he would have to start working on correcting. Right now, though, as she gazed at him with such fear and such trust, he couldn’t convince himself that she was just trying to manipulate him. And really, how could he say no to anything she asked for, this kid who had been through so much and still emerged one of the strongest people he’d ever known?

“Alright,” he sighed, and went around to the other side of her bed to lie down next to her. She immediately curled up against him, resting her head on his chest. Automatically, he wound an arm around her, holding her close.

The little bed was cramped and uncomfortable and his arm was already starting to prickle unpleasantly. He had no expectation of falling back to sleep that night. But, he thought, as El’s breaths turned slow and even, it was worth it if it meant his little girl could rest peacefully.


	12. Hey Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hey tomorrow you've gotta believe that  
>  I'm through wastin' what's left of me  
> 'Cause night is fallin' and the dawn is callin'  
> I'll have a new day if she'll have me_
> 
> Hopper takes El on her first camping trip and contemplates all the ways his life has changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first multi-chapter fic, and I really appreciate everyone who’s stuck with it and cheered me on with your positive feedback. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Hopper knew that El was standing next to him, waiting for him to look up. For all her mystery and power, she’d really never been good at subtlety, and he had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at the expectant look that he knew was on her face. But he’d been trying to get her to work on using her words when she needed something instead of just staring at him, so he didn’t look at her. He just took another sip of coffee and continued to read the paper, perhaps a little more intently than he normally would have.

“ _Dad,_ ” she finally huffed in annoyance.

He looked up and feigned surprise at her standing there, which he knew she saw right through. “Hey, kid,” he said brightly. “Did you need something?”

“They want to go camping,” she said.

“Who wants to go camping?”

She rolled her eyes, which he supposed was a fair reaction to such a stupid question. Still, she listed out all their names for him, as if he might have actually forgotten who her friends were. “Mike and Will and Lucas and Dustin and Max.”

His knee-jerk reaction was to say no, absolutely not. Spending the night outside where anyone could stumble across them while they were sleeping and defenseless was a risk. But on the other hand, she’d been spending more and more time outside anyway. Not in town, that was still too dangerous, but she walked the woods around the cabin often enough now that it was summer that they were already taking risks. And besides, if she was really going to be staring school in the fall, he’d have to start introducing her in public as his daughter soon enough. The period of hiding was so close to over that denying her this seemed silly, even with all his fears.

He wasn’t going to give it to her that easy, though. He nodded at her chair and waited till she was seated at the table to respond. “Okay,” he said, “you can go with them. But _only_ if it’s either around here or around the Byers’ house. And you have to show me exactly where you’re setting up so I can find you if I need to, and you are not going to wander away from that spot. And you have to stay together—”

“I _know,_ ” she interrupted him. “Mike said we can do it at Will’s house.”

“Okay.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, wishing he didn’t already feel so nervous about this. He was going to have to get used to letting her do normal kid things. Then he realized she still looked a little troubled and frowned at her. “I said you can go, kid. What’s the problem?”

“Mike said it’s outside,” she said.

“Well, yeah. That’s kinda the point, kid.” She was looking at him as if there was some significance to this that he was supposed to be understanding, but he had no idea what she was getting at. He hazarded a guess. “Are you worried about someone seeing you? We’ll take some precautions. It shouldn’t be any more dangerous than being outside during the day.” He wasn’t sure of that himself, really, but he tried to sound as reassuring as possible.

But she was still frowning. “Outside at night,” she elaborated, more quietly.

“Yeah, that’s—” And then it dawned on him suddenly what her point was. “You’re scared,” he realized.

She scowled. “I’m not _scared,_ ” she said hotly. “I just…”

He raised an eyebrow at her when she trailed off. “Friends don’t lie,” he reminded her gently.

She huffed at him, but then gave up her pretense of annoyance and sagged a little, slumping back in her seat. “Dark,” she muttered.

That made sense. It would have been remarkable if she _wasn’t_ afraid of the dark after everything she’d been through. And really, Hopper should have guessed her concern right away, given how often she fell asleep with her lamp on and the way she always, now that he thought of it, pressed a little closer to him when it got dark while they were sitting out on the porch.

“Okay,” he said, trying to think of how he could make this work for her. “Well, you can bring a flashlight, right? And I’m sure the others will all have flashlights too, so it’ll practically be like you’re inside.”

She shrugged, and he could hear her scuffing the toe of her shoe repeatedly against the floor. She was looking unhappily down at her lap.

“Hey, look at me. It’s gonna be okay, alright? Camping is fun and you’re gonna have a great time.”

She mumbled something he couldn’t understand.

“What?” he asked.

“Not just dark,” she repeated more loudly. “Also…sleeping outside. On the ground. It’s…” She trailed off as she so often did, trying to decide how to express herself. Eventually she said softly, “Bad.”

“Bad?” echoed Hopper. She nodded, looking miserable, and then suddenly he felt like the world’s biggest idiot for having _forgotten_. Fuck. Of course a kid who spent almost a month wandering the woods alone, fighting for survival, wouldn’t exactly enjoy going back out to sleep in those same woods for fun. It was bound to dredge up some unpleasant memories the same way dark rooms and enclosed spaces and certain kinds of touch did. “Aw, kid,” he sighed. “You know you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. They’ll all understand.”

But that didn’t seem to alleviate her concerns. “I _do_ want to,” she insisted. “But…” He could see the question written clearly in her face: _what if I get there and then I can’t handle it and I embarrass myself and ruin my friends’ night by freaking out?_

“What if I stayed over at the Byers’ house that night,” he suggested, “would that help?”

Despite El’s obvious frustration, a mischievous glint came into her eye. “With Joyce?” she said slyly.

“No,” he said firmly, though he knew she knew that he was just saving face. “But really, do you think that’d help?”

She hesitated, and he thought he knew why. It would be hard for her to feel like a normal teenager if she couldn’t go camping with her friends without her dad nearby. And while none of her friends would ever dream of giving her shit for it, he knew she’d feel ashamed all the same. “I don’t know,” she said eventually.

He was about to suggest that they pretend he’d insisted on it for safety reasons instead of for El’s comfort, in order to help preserve her dignity, when he had another idea. “How about we go practice camping?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “Practice camping?”

“Yeah, just the two of us. We could camp outside the cabin for a night so you can see how you feel about it before you go with your friends. And then if you decide you don’t like it, we’ll already be here at home and we can go right inside.”

“Practice camping,” she said again, thoughtfully. Then she smiled almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

—

“Alright, kid,” said Hopper, heaving the tent bag over his shoulder. “You ready?”

El nodded, tightly clutching her pillow and a couple of blankets. She looked grimly determined, as if she was steeling herself to head into battle instead of going out into the woods behind her house for a one-night camping trip with her dad.

They were both wearing backpacks stuffed full of every camping supply Hopper had been able to think of—bug spray, flashlights, extra jackets, a lighter, a knife, water bottles. And without El’s knowledge, he’d also tucked away his gun, for safety, and s’mores ingredients, for a surprise. Though he supposed she would probably be even happier with a box of plain old Eggos.

She was quiet as they walked a short way through the woods, just far enough that the cabin was out of sight but close enough that they could get back quickly if necessary. He stopped when they reached a break in the trees just big enough for a tent and a campfire. “Yeah, this’ll work,” he said, and dropped the tent and backpack.

El set her pillow and blankets on top of the tent so they wouldn’t get dirty and then turned in slow circles to take in all of the little clearing. It would be easy to mistake her expression for the wide-eyed wonder she still displayed every time they went on walks together, but Hopper knew her well enough by now to know that wasn’t it: she was intently focused on memorizing every detail of her surroundings so that she would be able to spot anything out of place later on. It was a survival tactic she must have picked up during her time hiding in the woods two winters ago, and it made his heart hurt to see that she was snapping back into those old habits now.

“Hey,” he said quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder to stop her spinning. “Remember what we talked about? You’re safe, you don’t have to worry. Just focus on enjoying your first camping trip, yeah?” She nodded and he conjured up a smile for her. “Good. Now why don’t you help me figure out how to get the tent up?”

It was an ancient, mildewy old thing that had belonged to his grandfather, and the only good thing Hopper could say for it was that none of the holes were too big. Still, he couldn’t help but grin as El pulled it from the bag and wrinkled her nose at the smell. “Gross,” she announced, which was a word Hopper had taught her the first time she’d scowled at her peas and then regretted ever since.

“That’s camping, kid,” he said cheerfully. “Here, hand me those poles.”

It took them almost fifteen minutes to set it up correctly, mostly because El insisted on doing a lot of it herself. He didn’t mention that he could have gotten it done in a fraction of the time; he enjoyed watching her work, with her sharp focus and slow, careful fingers. When it was done she stepped back with a look of pride on her face, and he reached over to ruffle her hair.

“Good work,” he said. “Now let’s get that fire set up.”

They had about an hour of light left, he figured, so after the foundations for a fire were built he suggested they walk around for a little bit. El had brought her book, an illustrated guide to Indiana plants, and every couple of minutes she stopped to look something up that she wasn’t familiar with. A lot of them Hopper knew already, but just like with the tent, he didn’t say anything. She so rarely got to teach anything to other people, since usually she was the one learning, and she seemed to take great joy in it. He leaned against a tree, watching her flip through the pages of her book, trying to find a picture that matched the big yellow flower she was crouched next to. She smiled when she found it and traced a finger along the words. “Evening primrose,” she said, and then read the description aloud in her slow, deliberate way. “ _These large, yellow flowers are open in the evening and closed during the day because they are pollinated primarily by moths, which fly at night._ ” She looked up at him. “This is my favorite.”

“Yeah?” She’d said that about most of the flowers they’d stopped at.

It was almost dark by the time they returned to their campsite, and Hopper hadn’t missed the way she was looking over her shoulder more frequently and had begun to stick a little closer to him as they walked. He pulled his lighter and a strip of cloth out of his pocket and used it to light the fire, smiling when El’s eyes widened at the sudden warmth and light.

He sat down on a log next to the fire and pulled his backpack toward himself. “Alright,” he said. “Time for the best part of camping.” Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that this wasn’t a very manly favorite part of camping. It also occurred to him that he didn’t care. He pulled the graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate out of the backpack, hoping they weren’t too badly melted. “You ever had a s’more?”

She shook her head and leaned forward to get a better look. “S’more?” she repeated.

“Yeah, s’more. First thing, go find me a long, pointy stick.”

“Why?” she asked blankly.

“You’ll see.”

They really did need the stick, of course, but he also wanted to encourage her to step away from him a little bit, to leave his side even though it was now dark. He handed her a flashlight and smiled encouragingly, and after a moment’s hesitation she left him to search, staying well within his sight but straying enough that it made him feel a little more optimistic about her ability to handle the whole night.

At times like these, it was hard to remember she was the same kid who had wandered Chicago alone and pretty much single-handedly saved the world.

She returned a minute later with a stick. “Perfect,” said Hopper, and gestured for her to sit down on the log next to him. Then he held the stick steady between his knees and slid a marshmallow onto the tip, and handed it to her. “Now hold it out in front of you so you can stick the marshmallow over the fire.”

“What?” she said, sounding startled.

“Here—” He put his hands over hers and helped her position the marshmallow perfectly over the flames. “There you go. Now it’ll cook.”

“How long?” she asked.

“However long you want. Depends how cooked you like it. But for your first one, let’s just get it to a nice golden-brown color.” When the marshmallow was toasted, she watched, wide-eyed, as he slid it off the stick and handed her a completed s’more. “Go on, try it.”

She took a tentative bite and then here eyes widened even further before she wolfed the rest of it down. “That was _good,_ ” she said, sounding surprised.

He laughed. “Right? Now let’s try another one.”

After tasting a few different s’mores, El decided that she preferred her marshmallow roasted rather daintily, golden on the outside and barely even gooey on the inside. She made a face after biting into one that was completely blackened. “Gross,” she proclaimed.

“Nah, kid, this is the best way to eat them,” said Hopper, finishing the burnt s’more that she pushed back towards him. “Nice and crisp.”

“Gross,” she repeated, but she was grinning at him.

By the time they’d made their way through all of the chocolate he’d brought she was rubbing her eyes and trying to yawn as subtly as possible. “Okay,” he said, sliding the leftover graham crackers and chocolate into his bag, “now _this_ is the best part of camping.”

“You said s’mores is the best part.”

He had said that, hadn’t he? “Well, this is the best part too.”

“There can’t be two best parts,” she told him, turning her neck as she said it to watch him as he stood to grab one of their blankets.

“Says who?” He spread the blanket out on the ground and sat down on it, patting the space beside him. She immediately went to sit next to him, curling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. He pointed up at the sky. “See that?” he said.

“The trees?” she asked.

“No, the sky.” It was true they couldn’t see much of it through the trees, but there were a few clear patches among all the dark branches. “All the stars.”

El was quiet, gazing up at them. “Pretty,” she whispered after awhile.

“Yeah. Real pretty. Sometime I’ll take you out where we can see more, constellations and stuff.”

She turned her face toward his. “Constellations?”

“Yeah. It’s like…pictures in the sky, made of stars. Like…like the stars are part of the outline, and if you put them together in your imagination, it makes a picture.”

That wasn’t a very good explanation, he knew, but El just nodded as if she understood. Then she asked, “Did Sara like…constellations?”

He felt his heart clench the way it always did when he was reminded of Sara unexpectedly. “Yeah, kid.” He cleared his throat. “She really liked ‘em.”

“Then I like them too,” said El decisively.

Hopper felt breathless for a moment, as if El had brought a bit of Sara back to life by saying that. But as touched as he was, he also didn’t want her to be _trying_ to bring her back. “You know you don’t have to,” he said.

“What?”

“Like constellations. Or anything that Sara liked. You don’t have to be anything like her. You know that, right?”

She looked a little confused. “I know,” she said, but sounded a bit uncertain.

“I like you the way you are. Not just because you remind me of her. I, uh.” He hesitated. This wasn’t something he’d ever said to her before, but it was true. He wasn’t sure when it had become true—he’d missed the exact moment—but somewhere along the way it had become as true as anything he’d ever known. “I love you.”

She looked up at him with wide eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something back and then closed it again, looking overwhelmed. And then, instead of answering, she moved a little closer to him and wrapped her arms around his middle, resting her head against his chest. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and held her tightly.

After a long time sitting in silence, she pulled away a little to look up at him. “Dad?” she said softly.

He looked down at her. “Yeah?”

“Thank you. For everything.”

He thought his chest might burst with fondness. This kid. This goddamn brilliant beautiful kid. “You’re welcome, kid. You’re so, so welcome.”

But really, he thought as she settled against him again, he should have been the one thanking her. He’d been a bitter alcoholic before she came along, drinking his way steadily toward what he assumed would be an early death. He’d snapped at the people he didn’t like and barely tolerated those he did and driven everyone away with his self-destructive behavior. And then this little girl had stepped into his life and filled it with soap operas and Eggos and reading aloud before bed, and she’d brought five other kids along with her, and a handful of teenagers and his old high school sweetheart, and things were different now. He had this whole messy little monster-fighting family, people he cared about, people he _loved,_ though he’d never admit that to any of them but her. And there she was, at the center of all of it, screaming at him and throwing telekinetic tantrums and sometimes not speaking to him for days on end, but also singing along to their favorite album and giggling when he danced and looking at him with wide-eyed wonder that never failed to take his breath away. There she was. And there she'd be tomorrow and the next day and for the rest of their lives, because she was his kid, and he loved her more than anything in the world.

El had fallen asleep against him, her head resting on his chest. He brushed a kiss against her hair and pulled her a little closer, and turned his face up toward the stars.


End file.
